


An Arrangement of Things

by Bibliotecaria_D, Shibara



Category: Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers Generation One
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-23
Updated: 2017-02-13
Packaged: 2018-03-03 00:54:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 4
Words: 32,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2832296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bibliotecaria_D/pseuds/Bibliotecaria_D, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shibara/pseuds/Shibara
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Scrapper is compelled to Arrange Things. Ratchet fails to be impressed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Title:** An Arrangement of Things  
 **Author:** Shibara, aka "augh how do words work"  
 **Editor:** Bibliotecaria_D, aka "feed me more coffee"  
 **Warning:** Read at your own risk. Decepticons being Decepticons, and Autobots being Autoboty. Non-con of the coerced consent flavor. Extortion, and Soundwave being a little turned on by it, not gonna lie. Scavenger/Vortex is the better end of the consent spectrum in this fic.  
 **Rating:** NC-17 for the above warnings as applied to sex.  
 **Continuity:** G1  


 

**[* * * * *]**  
 **Part One**  
 **[* * * * *]**

After the last whiny grunt had been kicked out of the repairbay via a boot to the aft by Bonecrusher, Scrapper shooed the other Constructicons out and sat down to get things done. It was his job, after all.

He accessed the gestalt’s internal logs of the battle and braced for Devastator's unique filing system. The file tree looked more like a Christmas tree, full of crazy passing notes about shiny things that hung off more important data, and the occasional clear memory or thought remembered in a perfect, permanently saved bubble amidst war-muddled temporary files. It was strangely beautiful in its chaos. Deck the Halls with boughs of _'Devastator destroy!'_

He browsed the files quickly, tidying as he went like a mall janitor absently rearranging ornaments on the branches. He noted down relevant data to assemble the official report for Megatron, a formality verifying that everything was in order. Everything had gone fine. Devastator had combined for the battle, done his job, and uncoupled afterward. Scrapper was merely reporting that the mall was closed, the tree was still in good shape, and Devastator was ready for the next battle.

Once the report was written and sent off, however, Scrapper returned to the file tree and gave it another look. He started from the roots and combed through the branches, far more slowly this time. This time, he took the time to really take a look at the tags and notes decorating the core of Devastator's processors. Otherwise unimportant for fighting battles and therefore ignored for reports to superior officers, what Scrapper studied now were what actually made up the combiner's thoughts while assembled.

To most mecha, gestalts worked by means of some crazy mumbo-jumbo science-magic hybrid probably invented when Wheeljack and Shockwave got falling-down drunk in a bar together. Not that anyone honestly thought those two would ever collaborate, much less drink together, but c'mon. Combiner teams. They were an invention only logic and sheer unmitigated _Boom!_ could spawn.

It wasn't like anybody else understood gestalts. Popular assumption held that the individual personalities of the team members disintegrated, the unraveled pieces weaving somehow into a separate being with a mind of its own. Splitting apart unwove the gestalt form's mind, dissolving its personality so that its separate components regained their minds. 

Messy as the popular theory was, it wasn't entirely false. Devastator certainly didn't act anything like the Constructicons did, with maybe the exception of Bonecrusher when he lost his temper, and even Bonecrusher didn't act like Devastator for more than the span of time it took a smart Decepticon to offer him a free drink. But while Hook didn't act like Devastator or vice versa, the theory had some truth in that they were part of one another. All of the Constructicons were part of Devastator's mind; its mind was a part of theirs.

Combiner components didn't _technically_ stop being individuals during a combine. They lost the barriers of private thought when they integrated, but that wasn't the same as spreading into an unconscious pool of conglomerate personality. Their barriers dropped, their gestalt links brought their minds together, and a new personality of sorts did form. They just didn't dissolve to form it. They integrated, instead.

Six mechanisms plugged into each other to form one united machine. Six minds and bodies became mechanically bound, and Devastator was less a new person than a hub that activated upon assembly. Its CPU stayed offline until their processors keyed it online, and their processors became its subprocessors, the unconscious functioning under and part of its conscious mind. 

What sounded to the world like a different personality was, in fact, the minimum common denominator between its separate components. It was a mind that consisted only of shared personality traits. Every mech in the gestalt carried that common denominator, combined or not, but only when combined did their commonalities dominate over their individual selves. No wonder gestalts tended to combine already enraged. Anger was easily the greatest thing mecha in battle held in common.

They shared more than emotion and personality. A gestalt worked like a six-password protected system. Hardware commands could only be executed if every member accessed the gestalt links at the same time. That made Devastator slow, ponderous, and nothing yet everything like the individual Constructicons who made it up. It felt only what they all felt, said only the words that every component wanted to say, did only what the Constructicons as a whole agreed to do at any given time.

Gestalts who reacted faster and thought quicker were simply combiner teams that held more traits in common. Sharing more through the hub of their combined form made it easier to reach consensus when combined. Hence why Defensor was far brighter than, say, Bruticus on the battlefield, or why Devastator could outthink Menasor. Even though the components of each Decepticon combiner weren't necessarily any dumber or smarter one-on-one, their ability to cooperate mind-to-mind affected the collected form.

The individual processes of each Constructicon linked into the gestalt form still functional, personalities and thoughts running like background programs under the surface of Devastator. They didn’t influence the mechanical process or distract Devastator if they cooperated as they should, although enough conflict between components or disruption fed into the gestalt links would slow its own thoughts and actions to a confused crawl. It was similar to what happened in a group hard-line interface, even using separate computers instead of mecha. Throw enough interference into the hook-up, and the connection slowed. 

The connection, in the case of the Constructicons, being Devastator. Long experience working together and reasonably compatible personalities meant that they didn't clog the connection much. The Combaticons, on the other hand, were a walking demonstration of why tying random mecha into a combiner team resulted in massive amounts of stupid walking around on the battlefield. Or rather, _a_ massive stupid. Bruticus could punch Devastator out, but Primus help the Decepticons if they ever had to rely on its intelligence.

Menasor was a case study in jamming things that didn't fit into the hub. Scrapper sometimes speculated on what the gestalt links sounded like when the Stunticons combined. Every mech could hear what everyone else was thinking in a combine, the gestalt links transmitting a constant stream through the combined form. Wildrider and Drag Strip caused enough fights just talking to each other uncoupled. They were likely why Menasor couldn't stay combined for more than five minutes at a time, and rarely spoke in more than _"Graaaaaaaaaar!"_

Devastator spoke. In battle, to its opponents, to its Decepticon allies, and occasionally, when the Constructicons agreed on a level below concentrating on a task, thought reverberated through them in Devastator's deep, slow voice. Among other things such as writing reports and pruning back the file tree that was Devastator's dormant processors, Scrapper's job was to pay attention to that voice. When Devastator wanted, needed or worried about something, it meant every mech in the gestalt did. Its voice was a consensus, and therefore, important to the team. Hook transformed into Devastator's head and torso, but Scrapper was the leader. He wasn't the physical hub of the Constructicons, but he stored Devastator's CPU. To him fell the duty of care.

Nothing obviously wrong popped out from sifting through Devastator's file tree today. There wasn't a _problem_ , per se, but there was something. It’d been there for a while. The Constructicon leader studied the glittering bits of information hanging off the data, thoughts and impressions that didn't seem important in light of the battle but gave an overall impression that worried him now, in the aftermath. 

The engineer remained sitting among the silence of the empty repairbay, thinking. Among the hurried, scattered files crammed with battle stats and commands, Devastator had _wanted_ during the fight. The want laid over the battle in delicate, glimmering traces of yearning. It wound around everything. Like tinsel, it got everywhere and couldn't be ignored. It stuck and clung and seemed disproportionately strong and invasive for something so nebulous. Even now, the dormant file tree gleamed with that want. Devastator wasn’t awake, but it wanted nonetheless.

It wanted someone, to be more precise. Someone with a grey chevron and medical markings, bright red and white glimpses noted and tagged off of firing solutions and violent action. Devastator knew the one it wanted, knew the depth of his knowledge, the skill of his hands, and his foul disposition. The want tangled through its thoughts, and Scrapper leaned back in his chair as he pondered that want.

It was an old, well-known want. Scrapper knew it. He even knew that Hook was probably to blame for it, at least at first. 

The arrogant surgeon hated Ratchet with a passion. He hated that professional standards forced him to rank the Autobot Chief Medical Officer's surgical skill on par with, if not above, his own. That made Ratchet both rival and role model, and that frothed Hook's coolant like nothing else. He hated Ratchet, admired his work, thought him weak, respected his strengths, refused to talk about him, obsessively watched him, and generally twitched and hovered in an upset flurry of conflicting needs and wants anytime the Autobot's name came up. He burned to make the Autobot medic scream his name, kneeling at his feet in reverence. Just...not necessarily in pain. And Ratchet might not be the one kneeling.

What Hook wanted was complicated.

Now, all of that was a fairly standard Hook train of thought, but the extremes Ratchet pushed the surgeon to hadn't subsided over time. If anything, Ratchet had proven himself an even worthier rival/role model as the war went on. That just made Hook worse. 

Hook being driven into a ranting tizzy had -- eventually -- caught Scrapper’s attention. Calming Hook hadn’t worked, so he’d turned to studying Hook's object of obsession, hoping to find a solution. Ratchet was quite a person to observe, so that hadn’t exactly gone as planned. 

The enemy CMO should have been a precious resource hidden away behind fortifications, rarely seen, but Ratchet went where the Prime went, where the worst of the casualties were, where he shouldn't go. He was in the field when he shouldn't be, against all wisdom: shooting, cursing, and trying to keep completely slagged Autobots in one piece, usually all at the same time. Scrapper had seen him do all three at once _while refusing to retreat._

There was something terribly wrong with that mech's processors. Scrapper found himself fascinated.

Hook craved adoration, for praise from his peers. Scrapper doubted he’d ever get that from this particular mech, but what Scrapper wanted was right there out in the open. It didn't need to be taken. It just _was_. He admired competence, and Ratchet had buckets of it. Efficiency, competence, and as an added bonus, the mech was a hands-on authority figure. He knew how to delegate, but he also knew how to lead by example. He would never follow if he could take the lead within his area of expertise.

That was an interesting little detail the quiet Constructicon leader tended to like for these sort of things. Yes, authority, and the desire to exercise it. That tipped the balance from passive interest to the sort of needy, nagging ache that tightened deep in his chassis.

Once his mind had been made up, he hadn’t even needed to tweak the interest of rest of the team. The gestalt links ensured that recurring thoughts tended to slip through. They were, after all, a team. Even if Hook didn't mutter to himself about the Autobot enough on his own, the frequent darting thoughts from Scrapper and Hook during combines brought Ratchet to the other Constructicons' attention. It turned their thoughts to him as well, and interest solidified in their thoughts the more it happened. An encounter here, a distant sighting there, gossip from prisoners and returned P.O.W.s during check-ups and interrogations, and they were well and truly intrigued.

The progression to wanting him was just a matter of time. Each of them found reasons to fancy the Autobot. Their reasons seeped into the back of Devastator's mind, merging and bouncing off each other as shared common interests connected through the gestalt links. That interest kept building up as dwelling on it brought new facets of Ratchet to each others' thoughts.

Long Haul and Bonecrusher agreed that his dry humor and nasty disposition were hilarious. He seemed to throw both around in equal measure. There were entire Decepticon units that refused to shoot at the Autobot medic after past encounters either saved or scarred them for life. High-octane force of personality was as tasty as high-grade to Long Haul, and Bonecrusher wanted to meet the medic who could make soldiers leery of his temper. Besides, both mecha willingly admitted that they had a thing for intimidating mecha. Ratchet certainly fit the bill, there. Even Hook grudgingly agreed that Ratchet had an appealing mix of skill and personality. 

In turn, Long Haul and Bonecrusher were impressed by Ratchet's hands as seen through the half-formed desires lurking in the back of Hook's mind. Those desires were hidden behind the seething hatred of Ratchet's skills, but they were there and they were _vivid_. Scrapper tossed his own interest in over that. Hook’s imagination churned out more ideas as they started to think on it, despite Hook’s denial that he wanted anything to do with the idea.

Too late. The three of them were already thinking about it. They all knew what a surgeon's hands could do. The idea of someone even better than Hook, well...it was hot.

Offended, Hook insisted he was the superior surgeon. That didn’t stop the lecherous rise of interest. It fueled it, if anything. Obviously the only way to find out who was better would be a competition, and the other Constructicons had plenty of thoughts about how the two mecha could compete. Even combined and half-conscious of what they were thinking about together, electric leers mocked Hook's blustered protests through the connection.

Devastator hadn't been much use in battle that day. He kept staring past the front lines at something nobody else could see, visor slightly dazed as his components refused to get along.

Scavenger had fallen into line soon after. His reasons were simple enough: he was jonesing for some good old fashioned team effort, nothing picky about it. He liked it when they agreed on stuff. Devastator worked well, projects flew by, and he felt useful. Seeing Ratchet as a focus for agreement meant he wanted the Autobot medic as strongly as Hook, perhaps stronger. It wasn't a personal attraction, but then, Scavenger didn't desire people so much as things. Objects. Pieces to add to his collection or use. 

Mixmaster made no bones about why he was down for it. He was hugely amused by the idea of fragging an Autobot. It helped that the others were totally fixated, but mostly he just found the thought hysterically funny. That registered as a sort of _’yeah, sure, whatever’_ for Devastator. It wasn't agreement so much as a shrug and _’eh, why not?’_

To Devastator, it’d become one thoughtful hum from its components. Every once and a while, but with increasing frequency, the gestalt slow, weighty voice would hesitate on the edge of saying something. Ah..? Hmm. 

But Devastator didn't -- not quite, not yet -- speak.

The thing was, Hook's interest and thus the team's interest had developed while on Cybertron. They didn't actually run into Ratchet all that often while fighting. It was a big planet, and it was a big war. He was an important resource the other Autobots did their best to keep Decepticons away from, especially really dangerous Decepticons like the Constructicons. That was vaguely annoying as their interest brewed into wanting, but Devastator’s silence was their collective awareness that staying away from the Autobot medic was probably for the better. 

Hook disagreed, of course, but that was Hook's problem. 

Four million years of stasis later, however, and it was suddenly Scrapper's problem. Earth changed a lot of things for the Constructicons. The Stunticons and Combaticons were only the most blatant changes. _Proximity_ was the change that hit them like a meteor.

One day after a relatively small raid to a power station after waking up on Earth, Devastator had been covering the Decepticon retreat. Business as usual until it wasn't, because there Ratchet was. Bam. One Chief Medical Officer, present and accounted for amidst the swarm of little Autobots pestering Devastator. 

Made sense, didn't it? Small crashed ship, therefore a small group of Autobots available to send into combat. Pickings had to be pretty slim for medics to be sent into the field. Hence, CMO on the battlefield, presumably because the building had collapsed on top of the yellow minibot.

The Constructicon combiner had seen him out of the corner of its visor, just like it had a dozen times since arriving on Earth. Ratchet was there, again, active and present and doing things that had Devastator's individual components' complete attention. The gestalt was _aware_ of him. They all agreed that he was interesting, that he had their interest, that he deserved their interest. They were interested. Devastator turned to follow the other Decepticons, but in its processors, in the voice that spoke for all of them, Devastator paused and said something.

That was the first time the unit reached consensus regarding the medic. The others hadn't been aware they'd come to an agreement, but it was Scrapper's job to find those united thoughts. They were important. Those moments of perfect clarity saved to hard files in Devastator's processor, hanging off the violence of battle in beautifully preserved bubbles of memory wherein six different minds decided in perfect harmony that Devastator wanted, thought, or should do something.

In Devastator’s mind, that decision came out along the lines of _‘dat aft,’_ but it could never be said that the Constructicons shared any sense of poetic flair. At the lowest shared denominator of their thoughts about the Autobot, they could all agree on Ratchet's aft. It was _fine_ , mm-hmm.

Crude truth, but truth. Scrapper had sat in the aftermath of that particular merge feeling out of sorts because what precisely was he supposed to do with this information? Send a letter spelling out the merits of Ratchet's aft? Devastator _wanted_ , but that didn't necessarily mean it knew what to do with that want.

Yet.

That first moment of agreement had been awhile ago. The small number of Decepticons on Earth meant that the Constructicons were put into active combat positions during missions a lot more than they had been on Cybertron. The energy cost of combining was worth the payoff to harvest Earth's energy. The small number of _Autobots_ on Earth meant that the Constructicons kept running into the object of their, ahem, affections. Lusts, really.

Where the Constructicons went, Devastator went. More often than not, the team merged during battle, and Devastator rose up -- and saw the red-and-white medic in the battle below. The lust grew. Many, _many_ variations of _‘dat aft’_ formed in Devastator’s helm. 

The thoughts were beginning to swarm. Scrapper could see it getting worse. Devastator's file tree was currently draped in Ratchet-appreciation. The Constructicons were agreeing more and more that they liked what they saw, and while Devastator's thoughts were the collected crude, lewd, and rude base urges they all held, some strings of higher thought glittered throughout the _'hurr hurr pretty.'_

Scrapper had known he'd have to do something soon, but soon had smacked into today. Today was the day he found a coherent fantasy tucked into Devastator's mind. It featured Ratchet's hands and raised voice in a distinctly noncombatant way, and ooooooh no, Scrapper did _not_ want Devastator putting together ideas on its own. The Constructicons subconsciously agreeing on a thought was the first step toward agreeing on an _action_. 

Someday dreadfully soon they would merge and lose their collective minds to the want. Devastator would just pluck the medic out of the middle of the battlefield of its own initiative, and not because it wanted to destroy the mech.

That would probably be wonderful while it lasted, but eventually Devastator would have to disassemble. Then the Constructicons would face being the laughingstock of the entire army. Scrapper could convince Megatron that indulging the quirks of a combiner team were required for smoother functioning, but this wasn't a quirk. This was six disciplined soldiers stepping out of line because their interfacing arrays took over. Even if Megatron didn't spot it, Soundwave or Starscream would figure out kidnapping Ratchet during battle wasn't a cleverly devised, if blunt, plan to weaken the Autobots by ridding them of their Chief Medical Officer. Cue the uproarious laughter at the Constructicons' expense.

Scrapper had to do something about this before Devastator got to the point of doing something on its own. He sat in the repairbay and pored over the plans he’d already made, trying to find one that had a hope of succeeding. 

The easiest solution would be just to nab Ratchet _outside_ of battle, where nobody could see them do it. Easy solution, that was, if Ratchet had been available to nab. The problem was that he proved quite hard to get.

Not in the physical sense. The crotchety old medic did tend to stay in-base much more often than other Autobots, Earth or not, but kidnapping wasn't that hard. A Decepticon could likely kidnap Optimus Prime himself if he had the means to pay for it. Grabbing someone, anyone, was a logistics issue that could be dealt with via paying a handsome amount of something to Swindle, who could out-think Prowl, Red Alert, and Onslaught combined if there were payment dangling in front of his greedy hands. 

That wasn't speculation. He'd literally done it. Red Alert still sent death threats. Prowl sat outside the bars staring in the most disconcerting manner anytime Swindle landed his aft in the Autobot brig. Onslaught swore his life was one of constant frustration and Jeep-wrangling, but he couldn't seem to stop the blasted conmech. Swindle had gotten away with what he'd done, and would continue to get away with what he did. Rumor had it that Megatron had been the one paying him that time. Nobody would ever know for sure, but it would explain why Decepticon High Command hadn't say a word about Swindle's doings.

Anyway, getting their mitts on Ratchet through kidnapping could happen. If they had the money, Swindle had the honey, and he'd be happy to deliver him right on time.

Scrapper pushed that plan aside as a desperate measure to be used only as a last resort. The thing was, kidnapping Ratchet wouldn’t really work the way they wanted. The Constructicons wanted a mildly cooperating Ratchet, not a hostile bundle of enemy medic waiting until they powered down to perform surgery on them. 

Well, no, actually, no one had a problem with that as long as live dissection happened _after_ the mildly cooperating Ratchet. Because there would be the hands, and the hands inside them, and the -- the handfuls of cables cut out, and that angry voice telling them they'd been bad, bad mecha, and the punishing spark of live current as wires yanked free, and the ebbing flow of losing fluid pressure as tubes severed, and -- and yeah. They were just fine with that.

Don't judge them. They had their kinks, okay?

But that was what they wanted to happen after less kinky but more pleasurable interfacing-type events occurred. Getting Ratchet's cooperation in said interfacing-type activity was the big problem. Scrapper didn’t have a solution for that problem, and it was a problem because Devastator might solve the problem for him sometime soon, and then he'd have a whole new set of problems.

The _other_ big problem was that when an idea solidified in a gestalt mind, it tended to itch. After a long enough time of itching without relief, it'd start to chafe. Itching, annoying as it could be in the back of their minds, only made them a little more prone to restlessness or irritation. Chafing was a different matter altogether. Chafing grated their minds against each other, a constant background near-pain that caused real issues as irritation bloomed into dislike, anger, and fights that could split the team apart.

The Constructicons couldn't afford that kind of internal conflict, not here on Earth, and that turned wanting Ratchet into a pressing concern. Dealing with it fell square on Scrapper's shoulders.

Gestalt commanders weren't just another step in the hierarchy. Yes, Scrapper, Onslaught, and Motormaster held rank over their subordinate teammates. No, military rank wasn't their sole responsibility. They had a number of specific tasks related to the gestalt’s internal structure. Scrapper suspected the other two gestalt commanders had so little control over their respective teams because they didn't know or didn't care about those tasks. Onslaught seemed to grasp internal power dynamics better than Motormaster, but still. Combiner teams didn't function through blackmail and physical force.

The authority of a single mech separate from the rest could work like that. Violence and intimidation could keep a unit more or less in line. Authority as part of a collective mechanism where, at the basic machine level, every connection to the hub of their gestalt form was equally valued...that's where the hierarchy became complicated. Gestalt leaders earned internal authority naturally, an evolution of the give-and-take of the united team. The leader’s position came, in part, from their agreement that he was best suited to carry duty of care for the whole group. While connected in a merge, their collective minds found who could do the job best. In return, the rest of the team recognized that one mind's authority over their own.

A gestalt leader monitored the team’s status far more easily and on a deeper level than the leader of a regular task-group could, but the team needed much more coordination to remain in optimal condition. For a regular unit, a working team effort toward a common goal was an asset. For a combiner team whose merged form needed team agreement every other second to fight on the battlefield, it was vital. They _couldn't_ have a falling out with each other, or Devastator was screwed. 

The Constructicons were six mecha with a long and sordid history of finding a balance. They’d adjusted to one another. It'd been rough at first, but they'd never actively hated each other the way the Stunticons or Combaticons did. In downtime terms, that let them stand back and bask in Megatron's favor every time the other two combiner teams fragged up, which happened delightfully often. The Constructicons would never tire of Megatron getting fed up with the other combiner teams. Mmm, official recognition of how great they were. Yes, they were the best, thanks for noticing. Oh, do stroke their egos more by yelling at the loser teams. No no, no bother. They could listen to this all day.

During battle, their ability to get along left Scrapper time to actually get stuff done. They didn’t need much guidance to agree on where to go and whom to punch, so Scrapper could co-opt a sizable amount of resources from each Constructicon for his own purposes. He typically used it for simple tasks such as individual status check-ups or problem-solving, nothing that would distract Devastator by running in the background while smashing puny Autobots was going on.

That time was also when the engineer had open access to the whole team's memory archives. Lying became almost impossible. They could hear each other's thoughts, even if they didn't save memory files of what they heard. That, they left to the team leader. Scrapper was the one who remembered, who searched, whose temporary file cache didn’t auto-dump when Devastator broke apart. He didn’t delete what he downloaded from the gestalt links until he’d reviewed every file. 

Part of the status checks he ran during merges involved poking around in the other Constructicons' processors and figuring out what was going on behind closed doors. It was a combiner team thing. They'd long ago given up on attempting to explain how the gestalt links worked, because their explanations inevitably stalled out at this point. This aspect of combining made other Decepticons recoil in distaste. A superior officer ensuring everyone stayed cooperative by nosing around his subordinates’ _minds_? Nope. Nuh-uh. Not a popular idea.

Possibly because the other Decepticons didn't trust each other. The Constructicons did. Their absolute trust in each other relied on understanding that went beyond mere words, however. Refreshing that trust through the gestalt links made the Constructicons crave merging after some time apart. 

Scrapper’s review of their mental states worked for the Constructicons. More than worked, it was necessary maintenance to ensure that they didn't break down. He maintained each part of Devastator like he would tune up any pieces of a machine, and like a mechanic fixing a machine, he didn’t tell it what he was doing or why he was doing it. 

The other five Constructicons let him access their minds so long as he followed a single rule: he didn’t explain himself. _Ever_.

It was for their own peace of mind, not his. They used to ask for explanations and demand answers. They’d learned better. Asking Scrapper to reveal the reasons behind his orders was a recipe for disaster. There were things they were better off not knowing. They heard each other during merges, but they didn't live in each others’ minds. Really, that was a wonderful, glorious thing to be grateful of. Ignorance was bliss. 

Scrapper saw into their processors, and he didn't talk about what he saw. He was the only one who saw their minds, all of them, and could evaluate their status in the wider context of the entire team. He saw the bigger picture and didn't show it to them. He kept it to himself. It preserved a measure of privacy in a team that regularly pumped their vital fluids through the same pipes, and that privacy probably kept them sane.

When he ordered them to do something based on what he saw, they just trusted that he knew what he was doing. The team's needs were his highest priority. That was what people outside the team didn't understand. In a faction full of selfish afts, the Constructicons didn't exactly stand out as selfless, caring individuals. The idea that Scrapper prioritized Devastator above all would boggle the Decepticons' minds, because he wasn't any less a selfish glitch than anyone else. He just happened to view the team as part of himself. Their needs were his needs. 

_Someone_ had to do it. None of the other Constructicons wanted the responsibility, that was for sure. The other Constructicons worked, lived, and were complete rusted axlegrinders to each other in the knowledge that Scrapper had their backs. They believed that in absolute faith. If something disrupted the internal coherence of the gestalt, Scrapper would be the one to pick up on the white noise fuzzing their connection. He'd act on it. They didn’t have to worry.

They definitely didn’t have to ask about it. He’d snoop through their minds and deal with any internal issues, and they wouldn’t ask what he was doing because if they asked, _he would answer._

Of course he had reasons for every official order he gave. They were good reasons. Excellent reasons. No one in the gestalt wanted to know which they were. They trusted Scrapper to respect their privacy and do what was best for them as individuals and as a team, and they definitely didn’t want him to explain what he’d seen in their heads. Bringing his reasons out into the open for the team to argue over made the orders he gave infinitely worse. 

They'd learned their lessons about asking for answers that made them cringe. They might not like what the answer was, but it would still be an order, and then they'd have to do it anyway while knowing that they'd brought the added humiliation of knowing _why_ it was good for them down on themselves. They were a long, long time away from their first merges, but they all remembered the awkward early stages of learning to respect and trust each other instead of fragging up spectacularly.

Like that time Hook demanded to know why he had to scrub Mixmaster's laboratory from top to bottom with a micro-brush, and Scrapper bluntly told him was because Mixmaster was one step from pouring acid on the surgeon due to the fact that Hook was stuck-up, arrogant, condescending, not as intelligent as he thought, and Mixmaster rather thought he was ugly, too. After the screaming fight was over, Mixmaster had done the acid thing _and_ Bonecrusher had punched Scavenger for trying to intervene. Hook spent time in the stockade for disobedience and insubordination. He’d ended up not only scrubbing the lab but apologizing to everyone for causing the argument. Long Haul refused to believe he was sincere, Mixmaster had applied to transfer to a different base despite the apology, and Scavenger had been terrified of Bonecrusher, something that still resonated through the gestalt links at strange times. 

That particular incident had taken a long time to sort out. It was kind of a relief to watch the Combaticons and Stunticons be complete rubbish at the teamwork thing, because their own early gestalt years were such an embarrassment in retrospect.

When Scrapper gave orders now, the other Constructicons bent their necks and obeyed. It didn't matter what he ordered. They didn't question why. They didn't even wonder why. They just did it. Age and experience had bestowed wisdom upon the team.

If Scrapper ordered Mixmaster on punishment detail for a week, the chemist went and did it without protest. If he ordered Hook to drop whatever project he was working on to go help Long Haul deliver a single cube of energon to the other side of the planet, the surgeon would howl his indignation to the sky, but he’d do it. If Scrapper ordered Bonecrusher to take the afternoon off to give Scavenger the gentlest, cuddliest, fluffiest frag ever, Bonecrusher would pause just long enough to give him a deadpan look of exasperation before dragging the fretting, fussing power shovel to berth.

It worked in part because orders from on high didn’t happen very often. Scrapper preferred his team to deal with most issues by themselves, using his authority as gestalt leader sparingly. The key to his power and control within the team was the strength of the trust they put in him. Most of the time that meant herding them along through military order and sweet-talking. The less he used the gestalt links as a means of control, the louder the whip cracked when he did. 

They obeyed him out of trust, and their trust was fueled by self-preservation. No one wanted to be a spacing, stupid hulk when Devastator next combined. Everyone listened and acted, no questions asked, and Scrapper kept Devastator functional.

Leaving Scrapper as the one who had to deal with the latest problem on his own, however. He rubbed his hand over his helm and glanced around the repairbay for inspiration, but nothing leapt out at him. He had to do _something_. Devastator’s sense of wanting had progressed from _'dat aft'_ to _'Mine. Mine mine mine. Minemineminemine,'_ and now it was more like _'GIMME NOOOW!'_

That was bad enough, but the individual Constructicons were showing the strain of shared desire. The backs of their minds chafed where vague interest had intensified to starved demand. Bonecrusher and Long Haul were matchmaking random Decepticons, whether or not those Decepticons wanted to be matchmaked. Mixmaster had stopped finding the idea of interfacing Ratchet funny and started muttering in eerie sync with Hook. Scavenger had found a large box somewhere and begun lovingly detailing it for occupancy, or he was when Bonecrusher and Long Haul weren’t locking him into closets for matchmaking purposes. 

Scrapper himself had spaced out in the middle of a build job, daydreaming. This state of affairs couldn't continue.

He just didn't have the slightest clue how to resolve the matter.

The answer came, as it did far too often for anyone’s taste, by accident.

Scrapper had been going half out of his mind searching for a solution, but the solution fell into his lap. Jumped into it, actually. Rumble and the Reflector components had been refueling together after the Cassette’s twin returned from the Ark, and a tiny snippet of information overheard from their conversation found its way to Scrapper’s audios.

Information usually reached the Constructicons through one of two routes: Hook or Scavenger. Hook was the obvious interrogator. He ruthlessly harvested what they needed while he had a source strapped to the surgery table, as there was nothing quite like a surgeon standing over a mech, portable lathe in hand. 

Hook considered coercing answers out of patients to be part of the trade, honestly. A trade along the lines of, "You tell me what I want to know, and I'll let you keep your fingers," which Decepticons considered to be a fair trade. Most mecha liked trades that left their fingers where they started. A true master of the craft could get what he wanted with a minimum of pointed questions, every word accentuated by the _whirrrrrr_ of power tools. Memory centers jumped to overdrive under that sort of questioning.

It was a rather blatant interrogation technique. The Constructicons’ quieter method of gathering information involved sending Scavenger off to wander the base. Scavenger, to most non-Constructicon mecha, was dull, boring, and forgettable. It made him much more effective than Hook at overhearing things he shouldn't. 

The Decepticons tended to forget Scavenger was there even when he sat in plain sight, listening. They dismissed him so quickly that Bonecrusher had once declared his amazement at the lack of burn marks. Whole conversations happened while Scavenger sat sipping energon in the common room, visor bright with interest . No one ever remembered he was there, or noticed him in the first place. Everyone knew he was the irritatingly sensitive, eager-to-please Constructicon, and then they ignored his existence.

Except Vortex, who kept Scavenger in sight at all times. If Scavenger came in while he was refueling, the Combaticon politely offered him seat. If he entered a room that Scavenger was already in, he made a point of always acknowledging him somehow, even if he had to go out of his way to greet him. That didn't even touch the minor favors Vortex did of his own volition. Small things, little shift-trades and such that would have been gifts if they were from a nicer mech, but it was Vortex and therefore just out of place. He treated the mech...differently.

He'd once coaxed the Constructicon into showing him his personal collection of special shinies. They were deceptively not-shiny. Most of Scavenger's private, gestalt-viewing-only collection consisted of boxes in various sizes. Many of them were small and showed signs of having leaked suspiciously familiar fluids in the past. Some of them were large, strangely so, and reinforced in a way that made Vortex look at Scavenger in dawning realization after studying them. 

He'd excused himself shortly thereafter, but he’d been very polite about it. 

For some reason, he couldn't seem to stay away after that. He hovered, torn between getting closer and getting away. The rest of the Constructicons idly speculated that he'd joyfully recognized the mind of a fellow psychopath, then had second thoughts about his joy. A moderately intelligent mech, he'd probably figured out that however attractive a dangerous thing was, proximity to said dangerous thing was a bad idea. Scavenger, hopeful and evil, sometimes extended invitations to tour the collection again. Vortex had ever-so-politely turned him down so far, but the look in his visor told a tale of eroding willpower. 

Being that they had a vested interest in keeping their teammate happy, Bonecrusher and Long Haul occasionally vetoed the Combaticon's self-control by shoving helicopter and power shovel into a closet together and locking the door. The sounds that came from the closet got funny looks from passing Decepticons, but Bonecrusher and Long Haul were satisfied by the results.

Vortex inevitably looked twice as conflicted afterward and kept his distance for a while. Smart of him, as Scavenger enjoyed closet-time immensely. He had a box half-ready in the collection, he enjoyed himself so much. Vortex's sense of self-preservation had kept him out of it so far, but time would tell. If the 'copter kept pseudo-courting like this, there might someday be a set of rotor blades and/or attached Combaticon gone missing from the base.

The Decepticons on Earth had originally assumed that Vortex's odd behavior was the interrogator fragging with everyone’s heads, but shortly after his weirdness began, Swindle declared he wouldn't be doing business with Scavenger. _That_ had left the faction gaping in horror. Swindle turning down business? Wasn't that a sign of the Apocalypse or something?

Cue everyone watching Scavenger like he'd explode.

He hadn't exploded. He'd kept on acting like Scavenger: overly helpful and eager to be of use. A couple weeks of that, and the issue had subsided into a sort of low-level background unease around him. If anything, it'd reinforced the habit of people pretending he didn't exist wherever he went.

Scavenger wished his comrades were less judgmental of people's hobbies, but he was a Decepticon to the core. He'd proceeded to take full advantage of the matter. He knew the value of being invisible.

What he'd overheard this time propelled him at full speed across the base and into Scrapper’s lap the second the common room emptied. The mech was so excited he bounced when he spoke. "Scrapper! Scrapper, listen, you gotta listen, listen listen listen!"

Surprised, Scrapper nearly fell out of his chair under the onslaught of bouncing power shovel. "Ah! Ah, yes?" His arms went around his teammate automatically, attempting to hold him still. "I'm listening."

Hook peered around Scavenger in bafflement, drawling, "You've gotten our attention. Talk, already."

Scavenger stopped dead. "Guess what?"

"Oh, for Primus' sake..."

They all had their quirks. Scrapper indulged their neediest teammate and played along, although Hook got out of his seat acting like he'd storm from the room any moment. 

"What?"

"I heard a thing."

"You don't say."

"It's a really good thing."

"Do tell."

"You're going to like it."

"I’m sure I will."

"You wanna hear it?"

"No, we want to sit here listening to you string us along," Hook snapped, snide, but Scrapper shot him a look.

"That'd be nice, Scavenger. Can you tell us what you heard?"

Bounce bounce bounce, went Scavenger. "Yes!"

"Yes?"

"Yes, I can!"

"Scavenger! Tell us **now** , or I'll rip it out of your cortex!"

"Scrappe~er, Hook's being mean to me~"

"Hook, don't yell. Scavenger wants to tell us something. I'm sure it's important. **He's** important." Scrapper pet Scavenger's shovel soothingly. "He's very good at hearing things we want to hear. We like that. We think that's a very useful skill."

Scavenger wriggled about in his lap, basking in the attention. "It is, isn't it? I think so."

Hook started to open his mouth to say what he thought about Scavenger and his so-called 'skill,' but Scavenger started talking. Hook shut up and listened.

According to Scavenger, Rumble had said that Frenzy had said that the perpetually talking sniper in the Autobot base had said that Ratchet was upset. That was interesting on its own, but Rumble had _also_ said that Frenzy had said that the sniper had said that the _reason_ Ratchet was upset was because some Autobot was dying, and not in a fatal-dose-of-ammunition kind of way but in a nasty-lingering-disease kind of way. Ratchet was upset because this nasty-lingering-disease type of dying had a cure, but _he didn't have it_.

Ratchet needed something he didn’t have. Hook stopped huffing impatiently over by the door and started quivering at Scrapper's shoulder, vents closed tight as he held his breath.

According to Rumble (which was actually according to Frenzy, who had overheard it from the sniper, who would be shocked to discover he'd been designated the patron saint of the Constructicons), what Ratchet needed but didn't have was a, " -- bi-current-whatsit thingamajig wut device,” Scavenger declared proudly.

At which point Hook almost clawed Scavenger’s optics out in total frustration. 

Scrapper restrained the surgeon. No, they mustn't murder teammates. No, not even if Hook asked nicely. What a ridiculous notion, Hook asking nicely. Hook didn't know how to ask nicely.

Next, Scrapper patted and praised Scavenger. A shower of approval upon him. _Such_ a useful mech. A great asset indeed. Hook thought so too, even if Hook wanted to kill him at the moment. Yes, Scrapper promised that Hook thought Scavenger was important. They should ask him to say so later. Now wasn't a good time.

Only after Scavenger and Hook were dealt with did Scrapper calmly call the rest of the Constructicons. It was time to Arrange Things.

When Scrapper arranged things, he was doing nothing more than being a tidy mech. He kept his work desk in order. He liked his tools organized, his team in line, and his forms in triplicate. Arranging things meant sorting files or putting a stylus away.

When Scrapper Arranged Things, it meant something completely different. It meant he was acting as Scrapper, leader of the Constructicons. They became an extension of his will. The full range of knowledge and skill of every component in the combiner team was his, bent toward achieving his objective, reaching his goal, and obeying his command. The Constructicons were a force of nature on the battlefield, merged or not, but they were nigh unstoppable off it. 

Wise mecha learned to move aside when Constructicons had the Arranging Things look about them. Move aside, hide, or capitulate if they couldn't be avoided. Arranging Things was on the Cassettes' list of things Soundwave had to be alerted of ASAP. Arranging Things had managed to make Starscream shut up. _Twice._

The Decepticon base would be a-flutter once word got out, but that was neither here nor now. Right now, the Constructicons were just getting warmed up. They responded to Scrapper’s call like hounds to the hunt.

Arranging Things required more information. Scrapper couldn't go to the original source, but he could go to the source two steps removed from the original source. 

Frenzy responded to the hail from the repairbay fairly quickly, taking it as a video call. He almost fell over as the video popped up. Six large mecha crammed onto his HUD screen in a garish muddle of green, purple, and bright red. They stared through the display as if they could pry answers directly from his helm by the power of single-minded focus alone. 

The Constructicons assured him they wouldn't tell anyone about the very high-pitched shriek he gave. They understood that he hadn't expected to see the whole team. It must have been somewhat alarming. Their apologies for startling him. By all means, take a second to recover his lost dignity. It was last seen being tossed wholesale out an airlock, but they wished him good luck finding it.

They didn't say the last part out loud.

Scrapper made soothing noises until Frenzy calmed, then reset his vocalizer softly so as to not panic him again. "If we're not interrupting anything, we like request a favor."

The soothing noises had barely been enough to convince the Cassette to come down off the ceiling. "...a favor." 

"A small thing." Scrapper tilted his head to the side a bit, visor gleaming. Around him, the other Constructicons didn't move in the slightest. They'd lapsed back into fanatic, disturbing purpose. "A fragment of surveillance video from your recent visit to the _Ark_. How did that go, by the way?"

Frenzy eyed the unnaturally still mecha surrounding Scrapper. "Went, um, pretty well. Got what I was sent for."

"Good to hear. Did you have any trouble?"

"Er...no? Got my foot stuck in a grate, but I got out."

"Excellent. Is the retrieved footage classified?"

"Not that anybody told me. Boss didn't say nothin'. He took what he wanted." Ugh, they were even venting in time with each other. They were like drones. Big, predatory drones staring through his HUD like turbofoxes watching a glitchmouse. Frenzy squirmed under their intent stares. Scrapper just kept making polite small-talk.

"What'dya want?" the Cassette blurted after one creepy unified blink too many.

Scrapper hummed. "As I said, just a small favor. It seems you may have recorded a certain Autobot talking about medical affairs that we, as your de facto medics while stuck on this planet together, feel a pressing need to be informed of. It’s a health risk, you see." A short snippet of conversation, that was all. A simple, professional request. Hand it over, please and thank you.

It took Frenzy a couple seconds to remember what he'd heard from the Autobots. "What, you mean the stuff about the sick 'Bot? Dunno how much use that's gonna be. All I heard was that Ratchet's -- "

Scrapper didn't tense a cable. That made the mass twitch from the other Constructicons all the more obvious.

Frenzy stopped dead. “Whoa.”

Five Constructicons considered him through the screen as if they were hungry creatures with great big teeth spotting a small, deliciously crunchy morsel. Scrapper was the only one putting any effort toward a civil front.

Cassette and Constructicons stared at each other for a moment. “Ratchet,” the Cassette said, experimenting.

They had sufficient control not to twitch this time. However, the sound they made resembled a feral growl, scrapyard machines scenting fresh fuel.

“That would be the Autobot CMO, if I recall correctly,” Scrapper said in a level voice above the grinding sound of empty tanks. “I do hope that my memory is in order. It would be a shame if my mind were to fail me, what with routine maintenance checks just around the corner. Who knows what might happen if that were the case.” His visor glittered madly. He sounded polite, but make no mistake: he was part and parcel of the peculiar Constructicon Arranging Things going on over there. Sanity became an option when Arranging Things started.

Frenzy hadn't gotten this far in the war without a passing acquaintance with Things Arrangement. There wasn't a Decepticon on Earth who wouldn’t duck and take cover if they saw the fierce intensity radiating off the Constructicons. Even the Combaticons would pick up on something out of the ordinary occurring and clear out in a hurry. They might have to drag Vortex, but they’d get up and go.

The Stunticons might not notice. Those guys didn't catch onto behavioral subtext unless it came explained in graphic format. They thought a subtle social cue was Lord Megatron threatening someone verbally instead of with his fusion cannon.

But Frenzy knew what was going on, and he knew that, while requiring a delicate hand at balancing risk versus gain, a mech could strike some sweet deals when the Constructicons were like this. Negotiating with a combiner team who _really wanted_ something was a bit of an extreme sport. At some point he'd have to fork over what they wanted or get trampled, but if he stopped bargaining before they ran out of patience...

Said bargaining went quickly since cooperation was in the best interest of everyone involved. Compulsory maintenance checks could be made an exercise in agony, after all, and although the Constructicons weren't threatening Frenzy in any way, they would prefer if this request remained off Soundwave’s radar for now. No one was uncouth enough to say anything to that effect, of course. They were all being such friendly comrades-in-arms today. No reminders needed of what an angered combiner team could do. Scrapper was simply _suggesting_ that Frenzy keep this little favor to himself. 

The lack of threat highlighted how threatening they could be. Frenzy smiled, nodded, and played along because he liked keeping his limbs attached. He'd keep his mouth shut, but they knew how Soundwave was. The Cassettes couldn't keep secrets from him for long. Why, even the suggestion was scandalous! Keeping secrets from the boss? Tsk-tsk.

Scrapper made more soothing noises. He had a talent for it. Perhaps, to smooth over this hint of social faux paus, they could do Frenzy a favor in return. Soundwave understood trading favors. Favors greased the Decepticons’ working relationships.

Frenzy gave that due consideration. Hmm, yes, a favor for a favor might sweeten Soundwave's disposition when the Comm. Officer inevitably discovered Frenzy's lie, but it would still be a lie. He just didn't know if he had it in him to lie to his boss.

Oh, but it wasn't a lie! Scrapper was offended that Frenzy would think he'd ask a Cassette to outright _lie_ to Soundwave. What Decepticon was stupid enough to ask that? For shame! No, no. Scrapper was merely suggesting that Frenzy _delay_ informing Soundwave of this small favor until Soundwave asked to be informed. That wasn't a _lie_ That was...being distracted. People forgot all kinds of things when they were distracted.

Distractions happened, Frenzy conceded. Soundwave would understand if he'd gotten distracted and didn't tell him about doing this little favor for the Constructicons. Except that Frenzy wasn't distracted. 

Soothing noises turned to dismayed ones. Not distracted? Who could fail to be distracted by presents from friends? The Constructicons, as it just so happened, had been planning on giving their good friend Frenzy a present very soon. They were split on what that present could possibly be. Perhaps Frenzy could play tie-breaker and throw his vote in.

Ah, well, in _that_ case, if it could possibly be something in the realm of those tasty congealed snack flakes Mixmaster didn't make for anyone outside the team, Frenzy could arrange to be pretty slagging distracted. Two cubes worth, and he'd forget to tell Soundwave about their mutual exchange of favors until whatever point in the future he decided to cash his end in.

So far, so good. They ended the call with nods and smiles, and Scrapper sent Mixmaster off to deliver the bribe that wasn't a bribe while the video file from Frenzy downloaded. 

It was disappointing. 

“Bi-current-whatsit thingamajig wut device” was not a term coined by Rumble’s disdain for techno-babble. It was an exact quote from the Autobot sniper Frenzy had spied on. This earned groans and vicious death threats toward spy and spied-on alike.

Hook’s triumphant yell cut off the grumbling an instant later. 

The device thingy -- as it was dubbed by everyone except Hook, who was a stickler for proper labeling -- was, in fact, a bi-current-enabled electrolyte stable field device. It was a complex, illness-specific piece of equipment that hadn't been found outside a major hospital since the beginning of the war. Since there were maybe four remaining large hospitals left and they were all on Cybertron, anyone unlucky enough to come down with the illness treated by that rare piece of equipment was doomed to a slow death.

The Constructicons knew Ratchet needed that specific piece of equipment because the talkative Autobot sniper chattered on about the sick patient two minutes later in the video. That was what had Hook yelling. According to the sniper, the poor mech had “gone all gooey-sockets.” Since that was almost word-for-word how the Decepticons described the ailment, Hook knew that description without needing to look up the official medical terminology for the symptoms.

It was, thank Primus for small miracles, a lethal disease when left untreated. Excellent. Autobot medics cared a lot more about dying cannon-fodder patients than their Decepticon counterparts did, so Ratchet had to be frantically searching for a cure. Hook’s informed opinion was that Ratchet would be _extremely_ interested in acquiring the device thingy for treatment, as to avoid the lethal ending. Depending on progression of the disease, need for the device would grow increasingly urgent over the course of the next month or so. The medic would probably want it after that, too, but not as urgently. Preventative measures weren't as important as a literal deadline.

“That’s it.” They’d found their leverage. Scrapper nodded to his team. "We have a job to do."

Scavenger whooped. "I did it!" Insecurity flickered through his visor. "Didn't I?" Pathetic cyberpuppy hope turned to wibble at Hook "I did, right?" 

Hook sneered, but Scrapper's elbow jabbed him in the side. The surgeon unbent enough to give the power shovel a rough pat on the shoulder. "Fine. You're not a complete waste of space." He waited until Scavenger bounced over to squeal at Mixmaster before muttering, "Today."

Scrapper sighed. Hook shrugged at him. What? That was high praise, in Hook-speak. He was impressed and grateful. 

Scrapper let it go. They had a device thingy to build. 

At first glance, the machine seemed complicated. This roused suspicion among the Constructicons. Complicated wasn't the same thing as impossible, so why hadn't the Autobots made one yet? Hook was pretty adamant about how time-sensitive this was. Perceptor and that crazed inventor-engineer Autobot regularly constructed much stranger devices from coffee, cardboard boxes, and an adamant refusal to obey the laws of physics. If they could pull stuff like the Dinobots out of their exhaust pipes every other time the situation demanded it, what was stopping them from building a solution this time? 

It didn’t make sense until a couple hours later, when Scrapper finally dug up the schematics. Then they understood. That first impression of 'complicated’ was like looking at someone hit by a grenade and saying, "Ooo, that's gotta sting." Technically it was true statement, but it was also a tremendous understatement. 

Building the device required an assortment of esoteric alloying skills and four rare minerals to generate the electrolyte compound. Skills could be learned, but the minerals were another issue altogether. Two of them couldn't be found on Earth. One couldn’t be found on Cybertron, either. 

Still, few things in life were impossible to attain, especially if one had a distinct lack of morals and Swindle’s comm. frequency on hand. One could say that having the latter necessitated the former. Swindle was more inclined to say that hiring him allowed mecha to keep their morals. Means and ends, and all that. Pay him enough, and he’d even refrain from telling squeamish customers about his questionable business practices.

The Constructicons weren't squeamish and didn't care about morals, so they hired Swindle immediately. The search transferred to his capable, if greedy hands. 

Two days later, his smiling visage appeared on Scrapper's HUD again. "Scrapper! A marvelous coincidence, a brilliant stroke of luck -- it's your lucky day, mech." It didn't seem physically possible that a smile that wide could exist, but there it was. "By sheer chance, it seems some dear friends of mine will be detouring by Earth to drop off some goods **anyway** , and since they're already on their way, they might, perhaps, stop to pick up an order of certain items that unscrupulous traders might, if paid on time by the right people, leave in an abandoned mine for my dear friends to, ahem, retrieve. Not that they shouldn't be reimbursed for their time and effort in going out of their way to make this delivery, you understand, since this mine is located in an area that the Galactic Council hasn't **banned** access to but the Enforcers get a mite touchy about unregistered ships slipping in and out of it, if you know what I mean." Swindle winked, turning the smarmy charm up past eleven. "Now, considering the amount of **danger** to their very **lives** , I don't think it unreasonable of them to ask a delivery surcharge. They're being so accommodating, after all, and you might be my favorite gestalt commander, but they're my dear friends, my dearest of friends, and I have to balance the safety of my friends against those things you asked me to get for you."

Scrapper sifted through the blather for actual important information. What it came down to, as it usually did with Swindle, was, "How much?"

"Tell you what, I'll tell you **what** , I think we can make a deal. We can do this, no worries. Might even be able to get you a discount on account of how much I like you!" The twinkle of Swindle’s optics momentarily whited out the camera.

Scrapper didn't react to the blinding flash or the hearty laugh. He just repeated, "How much?”

Swindle was even better at negotiating during Arranging Things than Frenzy had been. He conned a pile of shanix the size of a small moon out of the Constructicons before he was done tacking auxiliary fees onto the initial cost. Scrapper eventually had to sic Scavenger on him to stop the flood of bills.

Somehow that turned into Onslaught requesting through formal channels that his 'copter be returned, but hey, whatever worked. Swindle delivered the goods and stopped charging extra fees, and that was all Scrapper cared about. Besides, Vortex didn't seem to remember anything after the closet. The only one traumatized by boxes was the mech who considered cash to be therapeutic. Swindle would be fine after final payment cleared.

It was worth the fuss. The Constructicons managed to acquired everything needed to build the device thingy. For about two weeks after that, their off-duty time was dedicated to manufacturing components and assembling them into a finished piece of equipment. That took longer than they wanted, but they weren't Cybertron’s best build team for nothing. 

A short, unethical period of testing on unfortunate fellow Decepticons later, and the galaxy had one more bi-current-enabled electrolyte stable field device in it. Day Nineteen of Arranging Things was heralded by Scrapper stepping back from the finished device and declaring, "It's finished."

The other Constructicons looked at him. They looked at each other.

"Now what?" Bonecrusher said.

That was the million-shanix question, now wasn't it? Unusual as romancing an Autobot was, they certainly weren't the first Decepticons to chase a bumper across faction lines. They weren't even the first Decepticons to blackmail an Autobot into reciprocating. The problem with these cross-faction courtship-via-extortion situations, and the reason so many of the Decepticons involved wound up executed for treason, was that relaying the message to the intended target of their affections could be tricky. 

Avoiding official channels was a must. It wasn't because of objection from higher authorities, although being the Decepticons' most reliable combiner team and the only Decepticon medics available on Earth guaranteed a fabulously wide margin of error if their message was intercepted. As the thing with Grapple had proven, they weren't immune from consequences if they got stupid and got caught, but High Command would turn a blind optic to their doings as long as they at least made an effort at plausible deniability. Soundwave, and probably whoever did Soundwave’s job for the Autobots, would greatly appreciate if the Constructicons weren't total fools and propositioned Ratchet in public. It was basic courtesy.

So even though Mixmaster swore it would work, broadcasting _“We have that thing you want, come and get it!"_ over an open comm. channel was out of the question. For one thing, suggestive eye ridge waggling lost a lot of impact through text message. 

That didn't rule out the similar and slightly more subtle alternative, however. 

The rumor mill was going to have a party.


	2. Chapter 2

**[* * * * *]**   
**Part Two**   
**[* * * * *]**

 

The rumor mill did not, in fact, have a party. Parties involved chaos, and chaos implied that nobody was orchestrating every move made. This was a perfectly organized movement of information. If anything, the rumor mill held a ballroom dance. 

Ratchet knew full well how the rumor mill worked when left on its own. Cosmos did, too. This was not normal rumor mill behavior. Somebody was using the gossip network for their own ends, and Cosmos had heard exactly what he was supposed to.

That didn’t prevent the stubby spacefarer from beaming, wobbly but proud, at the medic. He'd done his part in the data harvest. He was nervous but accomplished.

Not that getting information out of Astrotrain had been much of a challenge. The gossip positively burst out of him the second the small Autobot 'accidentally' crossed his orbit, which had been no accident and came about despite the fact that Cosmos had been scooting along toward the moon trying to evade the shuttle. It had nearly come down to snagging the little orbital platform with a tractor beam and yelling that he wanted to tell him something. Cosmos wasn't generally part of the gossip chain, okay? It took him a while to catch on.

A few necessary preliminary threats and counter-threats later -- macho posturing in space -- and the Decepticon triple-changer had been delighted to pass on the rumors about a Thing that had been going on in the barracks. Admittedly, it'd been the malicious delight of sharing that the Constructicons had a device thingy they thought the Autobot CMO’s really wanted, _'"if you know what I mean."_

Cosmos did. Astrotrain wouldn't have been sent up to chase him around and tell him about the device thingy unless somebody wanted the Autobots to know there was a device thingy available. Either it was a taunt to inform Ratchet of what he couldn't have, or the Constructicons wanted him to know they were willing to open negotiations. The lascivious wing-waggles and juvenile snickers from Astrotrain had made it clear which option he thought it was. There had been a cruel glint in his cockpit that Cosmos was fairly sure translated from Astrotrainese into, _"This is awful, **awful** news, and I'm having a grand time inflicting it on you."_

Naturally, the minibot sped back to base to share the bad news.

The news was duly received by Ratchet, who thanked Cosmos for coming to tell him first. He watched the spacefarer jog off towards actual commanding officer-type people, people who would do more to debrief and grill him over the encounter than Ratchet had. Ratchet had just stared at him for a couple minutes in grim silence. 

It was good news, in a way. He'd been praying for a miracle, but the medic didn’t smile now that it'd appeared. He wasn't happy. He checked the monitors for the umpteenth time that afternoon, engine growling softly in anger, and tried not to kick the wall out of sheer, teeth-grinding, frustrated fury. Huffer was still dying. Ratchet still couldn’t save him. Cosmos’ piece of space gossip hadn't been a coincidence, not with Huffer lying in a puddle of his own fluids two berths away here in the medbay. The Decepticons had evidently found out about the poor mech's condition, and about what Ratchet didn't have on hand to cure him. 

Now the Constructicons had what he didn't have. It existed, and yes, thank you Primus, that was good news. Ratchet acknowledged that. He'd make the appropriate tallymark on the medbay's ongoing IOU chart. Somebody would get around to sending thanks out into the cosmos, or saying a Hail Mary, or sacrificing a chicken. 

Meanwhile, Ratchet would deal with the bad news. The _bad_ news was that what he needed -- what Huffer needed -- existed in Constructicons hands instead of Autobot ones. The Autobots had little time to get it, and knowing who had it, they'd be walking through the Pit to do so.

How they got it didn't matter. Ratchet needed the confounded thing, one way or another.

They had tried to recreate it and failed spectacularly. Not only had they failed, but they'd nearly gotten caught by the Galactic Council in the bargain. Ratchet didn't know the details or care, but there had been something about Enforcers and an abandoned mine. Regardless of the tale, the story had ended in failure. Without the mineral they needed, the bi-current-enabled electrolyte stable field device couldn't be built. Wheeljack insisted he should be able to synthesize an alternative compound by the end of the month, but what good would that do? Huffer's frame would be gray, cold, and a bit gooey at that point. 

The Constructicons had what Ratchet needed to save Huffer's life. They had made it _for him_ , if Cosmos and Astrotrain's blundering dance through the rumor mill was anything to go by. They meant for him to know they had it, and therefore they likely meant for him to get it in time to use it.

The medic was too old and embittered to feel relief. He stomped on the small bubble of it that kept threatening to grow. His professional diagnosis prior to Cosmos’ arrival had been death, and he refused to change that diagnosis until he had the device in his hands. Long experience gave him the cynicism to make that call. Whatever he _wanted_ to believe, it just wasn’t likely that the Decepticons would save his patient. Hoping for a miracle didn't mean it’d appear, and if it did appear, that didn’t mean that he'd get it in time. The odds were still weighted toward Huffer kicking it. 

The Constructicons knew the importance of the device. They could want to watch him get his hopes up before crushing them. Maybe they wanted to make him beg. They might be setting him up to choose between a patient's life and betraying the Autobots by turning over supplies or information as a trade. He didn’t know what their game was, but he already knew that he didn't like the rules being written by anyone else. The Constructicons setting the rules put him on the losing side from the start. Their conditions for a trade would be plentiful and probably malicious. 

Although it _was_ odd. Decepticons generally went for over-the-top displays when they had the upper hand in something. They liked to show off for each other as much as they enjoyed rubbing the Autobots' faces in their victory. Spreading the word via rumor-mongering didn’t quite fit Megatron’s usual wide-screen gloating approach.

The frown on the medic’s face deepened. 

Nothing in this fit Megatron’s standard operating procedure, in fact. Extortion, sure. Going far out of his way to create something to _help_ the Autobots, only to quietly dangle it off in the distance? Not Megatron's style. If he had something the Autobots wanted, a grandiose announcement would open bidding on that thing, loud and public. This felt more private. This was practically subtle, letting gossip inform the relevant mecha that there was an item available if they were interested. 

It left contact up to the Autobots, and that alarmed Ratchet. Discreet negotiations were often the most costly.

No, the more he thought about it, the more he doubted this had anything to do with Megatron. Both factions had competent spies and infiltrators. It made much more sense to just wait for an opportunity to exploit rather than go through all this trouble. Plans that saved Autobot lives in the end weren't profitable for the Decepticons as a whole. 

A comm. ping for a network conference arrived, cutting through the medic’s train of thought. Three IDs waited for him to pick up and join the conference call. Three familiar faces blinked up on his HUD when he accepted the ping. 

Optimus Prime, as ever, asked after his downed soldier first. “How is Huffer?”

His voice held nothing but gentle concern, no blame or pressure behind the calm words, but Ratchet immediately bristled. it vexed him that people kept asking the same blasted question over and over again. As if he wouldn’t inform everyone the moment the situation changed?

“Dying," he snapped, then regretted it as soon as it was out of his vocalizer. His fraying temper was no excuse to hurt someone who was only being a caring friend and commander. Ratchet grimaced and shrugged in lieu of an apology. He was just too tired and too angry for tact. 

Optimus Prime looked away, and Ratchet felt like a heel. Fraggit.

“The probability of this rumor being a bluff is low, well below average,” Prowl stated in a somewhat uncomfortable voice once the silence had dragged out too long. “We have been monitoring movement among Swindle’s known associates, and activity has picked up. We believe that recent shipments we could not block or intercept match items in the list Wheeljack has provided, although we cannot be certain." Even Jazz couldn't make a smuggler's shipping invoice magically appear out of thin air on demand. Prowl gave the most delicate of vocalizer resets as he said, "Our, ahem, failed attempts to contact Swindle match the time frame, too.” 

He looked vaguely off to the side of the camera, pretending hard that he hadn't said anything. Autobots, contacting a Decepticon merchant for supplies? Perish the thought.

Ratchet didn't care enough to pretend anymore. Of course they had tried contacting Swindle.

At the earliest stages of the war, going as far as _suggesting_ a purchase from a Decepticon would have been paramount to treason. Cross-faction associations of any kind were labeled as fraternization with the enemy. That offense still carried consequences ranging from punishment detail to demotion or incarceration. Even contact with neutrals had been discouraged to a large extent. 

Such a strict policy early on in a civil war had, not surprisingly, contributed to many cases of desertion as both sides lost soldiers to benign or even beneficial contacts. The lack of compromise forced mecha to make a choice of leave or face the consequences if caught, and the risk wore on them even if they weren't caught. The strategy had served its purpose, however. Cutting ties outside the faction promoted loyalty to the Cause and a lack of moral gray area when it came to dealing with those outside it. 

Alienation from outsiders made them easier to kill people who were, apart from choice of faction, just like them. Civil war turned a population on itself, and most mecha hesitated before pulling the trigger on a former friend or neighbor. It was simply easier to get soldiers to shoot people they had absolutely nothing to do with, rather than try to get them to shoot at that mech they bought moonshine engex from every once in a while. 

The isolation policy became inconvenient at some point in the war. The two factions had been at war for so long that most mecha didn't really need the help getting into the right mindset. _'We might have to shoot each other in a minute'_ was pretty accepted subtext for conversations, these days. It was just, well, they still had stuff to talk about, _despite_ eons of fighting. The longer the war went on, the more open those conversations became. 

There were things that both sides wanted, and they cared less and less who had what they wanted. With their population shrinking at the speed of bullets, Cybertronians found themselves with few in-faction alternatives. The more specific a field of knowledge was, the less likely a survivor with the specialty could be found. There weren't many people left alive knowing the tools of the trade. 

What trade? Any trade. It hadn’t been much of an issue for a long time, especially in the earlier stages of the war. Cybertron hadn't yet been devastated. Neutral areas still existed. The means to produce, the industry materials, even archives of preserved information were all still there, available to access, and there was a stockpile from before the war shut down production. The war had sucked up many resources, but most factories outside of major target zones were able to keep a small crew on the job. Non-essential resources became extremely scarce at the minimum of production, but they existed.

Time ate the stockpiles, and death winnowed the pool of skilled laborers down to a scant handful. By the time the war had destroyed their homeworld and abandoned it for off-world battles, both sides had lost access to certain fields of knowledge, practical or not. Even having the information preserved in some way didn't mean that everyone -- or anyone, really -- had access to it. Resources were scarce, often too scarce to portion out to the preservation and distribution of nonessential information. 

One of the great tragedies of the war was the massacre of information. When the Autobots knew beyond a doubt they'd lost Iacon, they took as much as they could from the world archives and torched the rest. The gigantic server banks that supported the planetary infonet went up in flames. Decepticons and Autobots alike went after the scattered, isolated support servers across the rest of Cybertron. What databanks and archives could be saved from destruction had been isolated and encrypted to keep them from enemy hands, so the information became guarded by military rank. Information fragmented, and access became permitted under faction-oriented reasons. Access could only be done by those deemed safe enough. 

Maybe that seemed like controlling dangerous knowledge at first, preventing the wrong people from learning vital wartime skills, but what it really did was turn mundane information into contraband. A massive amount of common infonet data disappeared amidst the loftier files. The only way to learn new -- or rather old -- skills now happened directly from experienced mecha willing to teach others, and those experienced mecha kept getting rarer as the war went on.

The most important things had survived, although it was debatable what was considered important. In terms of the war, medical databases, records of historical events, and weapon designs tended to remain a priority. Preserving those things happened, and multiple sources were available in both factions. The smaller, less war-valued things, however..well, a mech found someone who knew, or he didn’t. 

It didn’t matter how many settlements were built on distant asteroids to harvest and process the right resources; once all the chemical engineers that knew how to make ozone-scented wheel-rubber moisturizer died off, that was the end of manufacturing more. Mecha doled out what they had, but eventually everybody ran out. Once it was gone, that was the end of that. Pick which knock-off brand was closest to that old favorite, because there was no more genuine product to be had. 

It was an unavoidable consequence. Everyone saw it coming, but they were completely unable to stop it. War destroyed and locked up information, and then it killed those with the experience to use it or the knowledge to pass on. 

Individuals gathered all sorts of little bits of information and skills through out their lives. Those small details had once made up the collage that was daily life before the war. Those assembled tidbits had been from hobbies and places and weird passing interests from a time before everyone became a soldier, and each one spoke of a home that was still out there only in the most technical of senses. For a species of expatriates -- from their hometowns and their former lives, even from their planet -- those tidbits were priceless. The dullest hobby a mech had ever had might make him the last living specialist in how to be dull in that particular hobby, and there were mecha out there in the war who desperately wanted to learn that hobby. 

So when word got out that there was this one fellow that remembered how to prepare those flaky snacks one could get in the streets of Tarn for half a shanix and change, no one cared what faction he belonged to. They didn't care that the guy charged six shanix. Mecha just remembered the tangy flavor, the crunch, and what the tiles on the streets used to look like. They looked off into memory with unfocused optics.

At some point, the details became so hazy that officers started suffering temporary amnesia. They'd hand six shanix to a subordinate and look the other way, and somehow they'd forget to ask where the resulting snacks appeared from. Maybe an Autobot made them. Maybe a Decepticon did. Maybe nobody gave a frag as long as they could keep buying them, even if the canny glitch hiked the price up another shanix and a half.

Of course not all cross-faction fraternization worked out so harmlessly, but those ignored, unimportant transactions opened the door to options. The possibility of doing something instead of shooting created opportunities for bartering, trading, exchanging mutually beneficial favors. It worked as long as it was perfectly clear that they were enemies who would be killing each other in the field tomorrow, but it seemed that their guns were out of ammo and anyway the landscape was too nice to blow up and, oops, might have dropped some shanix there. They'd be confiscating these for the war effort, now, and please do let them know when the next batch was baked, because rumor had it some mecha might be interested in buying a couple dozen.

The black market grew strong and rather bold, and unofficial channels of communication prospered alongside it. A system developed over time, weaving into interconnected, snarled networks wherever both factions put down bases for any length of time. The system spawned tangles of connections complete with parallel neutral comm. addresses and a few key representatives for each faction. For instance, everyone in the know on Earth knew that on-world stuff could be purchased by going through Sideswipe, and Swindle was there for illegal or off-world deals. Everybody also knew that a rough bit of plating threatening to turn into an itchy rash could be treated quiet and discreet, no questions asked, by contacting a carefully unlabeled comm. code and showing up on neutral ground unarmed. 

The rumor mill had become some sort of open information-mongering network, through which things became known that were officially classified as sensitive but unofficially were common knowledge. It could have been a dangerous leak, but everybody knew about it and everybody used it to pass on warnings and tips. Not stuff that would change the course of the war. Stuff like the fact that Sector 7 and M.E.C.H. were human organizations that menaced all Cybertronian kind, Mixmaster would make snack flakes for a price, Soundwave _would_ play along if mecha called on Talk Like A Pirate Day, and First Aid treated interface transmitted infections without changing expression no matter who turned up for treatment. This wasn’t highly classified information being passed down the gossip chain.

The whole mess was held together by a subtle ladder structure of make-believe. Everyone from the top brass down knew exactly what was going on, but they also recognized the necessity and convenience of it. Therefore, they pretended it didn’t exist outside of their specific hierarchic circles, and even then it didn't get bandied about. So grunts only spoke about their contacts with other grunts, officers only spoke about such things with other officers, but only other officers they knew and trusted. If anyone suspicious or particularly uptight about the rules and regs showed up, no one had ever heard anything, nothing at all, and they'd swear that on the AllSpark’s hot bubbly core. 

Except in occasions like this one. Ratchet had torn his way through the fragile pretense three weeks ago by outright telling Prowl, Jazz, Red Alert, First Aid, Wheeljack, Sideswipe, and _Skyfire_ that if they didn't cough up contact information for whatever miracle-worker could get him what he needed to save Huffer, he'd be walking to the Decepticon base to talk to the mech himself. The way he'd been glaring at the time, the ocean would have parted for him like a sea before Moses. Skyfire had been so taken aback he'd headed out for a mission to Mars that night, and thus had everyone discovered that he wasn't linked into the Earth network at all. As far as he knew, the Autobot CMO had just approached him demanding he commit treason by contacting the Decepticons.

Ratchet would have felt a little bad about confusing the shuttle, but he had more important concerns. Strangely enough, three separate reports on attempting to contact Swindle had shown up on Ratchet's desk that night. None of them were signed. None of them reported success.

“'Cons haven't made official contact yet, and they gotta know it’s a time-sensitive matter. I'd say this doesn’t have the Buckethead Seal of Approval.” Jazz hummed thoughtfully. "And if Megatron's not the one tellin' him to stand down on this, that's gotta mean this deal's under the table."

Prowl's optics flashed bright before darkening. "Someone is paying Swindle more than we are offering.”

Someone was offering more than the entire Earth-stranded Autobot faction of the _Ark_ could put on the table. Even Ratchet had to stop and think over the connotations of that. 

Motives and plots of Decepticons were treacherous, traitorous, and unpredictable, but Swindle's greed was a universal constant. The greasy Combaticon merchant had been nowhere to be found for the past three weeks, and the Autobots had assumed he was either half dead on Hook’s slab or he _wanted_ to be unreachable. Possibly both, if Megatron was involved, but Megatron didn't seem to be. That meant that Swindle's absence was all him, and _that_ only happened when he knew there was a sweeter deal elsewhere. 

“Ratchet, my mech, I think this is personal.”

Ratchet thought so, too. The whole half a minute this conversation had lasted was too much time wasted, if that was the case. Pondering the whys, hows, and wherefores could be done after negotiation terms were brought to the table. Even better, it could happen after he had that sought-after piece of medical equipment in his hands and Huffer was returned to being more alive than dead. 

Not being one to waste words when action was needed, Ratchet skipped the preliminaries and requested Blaster join the conference. The Comm. Officer's vidfeed blinked up. Ratchet, being who he was in the circumstances that they were, immediately demanded the line be encrypted, plus an open channel to the Decepticon repairbay’s internal communication frequency. 

Blaster lost his habitual smile and blinked. "...what?"

Ratchet frowned. "You heard me. Don't play deaf. Huffer doesn't have time for people to get cutesy."

One of problems with being an individual who spoke his mind was that not everyone could read his mind. That was sort of necessary to understand what he was thinking prior to whatever came out of his mouth. Blaster did some more blank staring. Ratchet's frown deepened.

Jazz smoothly intervened. "We got a thing happenin' here, Master Blaster, and what Ratchet's sayin' is that he's in a hurry to move things along. Give him a line to the Constructicons while we talk over on this channel, yeah?"

A light dawned. "Ohhhh. Yeah. On it." Blaster smiled weakly and threw up a Busy screen at Ratchet's impatient _'Get on with it!'_ gesture. "One moment, please."

Prowl and Optimus Prime had already seen the light and wisely moved on to things they could control, namely anything but a medic on a mission. Extortion damage control was something they could do, and they could do it while listening in on the conversation that would inevitably happen whether they raised objections or not. It's not that Ratchet didn't respect and obey the chain of command. It's just that he knew the formalities they had to go through before admitting he was right in the end, so he'd skipped to that end without acknowledging the middle. Huffer didn't have the time and Ratchet didn't have the patience to go through the pretense of Autobot-Decepticon underground contact.

Everyone was just going to pretend the debate had happened. They'd been argued into the ground. Yes. That was what had happened.

Ratchet would handle negotiating with the Constructicons. The other officers would handle the fall-out. In a medical situation, he was the best-equipped mech to deal with on-the-spot decisions, even if there was a patient's life involved. He did triage. It would hurt him later because he was a decent mech and a better medic, but he could shut down his emotional involvement and make the logical choice for the sake of the Autobots as a whole if the price mounted too high. 

Right here and now, the wisest choice was to let him make contact while they kept an audio on the second channel. They'd chime in when negotiations were over. Or mostly over. Or when they were fairly sure they wouldn’t get their plating stripped for daring to interrupt a stressed medic. The Autobot officers weren't cowards, but they weren't idiots, either. Stress elevated Ratchet’s bluntness to a work of art. Commanding officers everywhere winced. Grunt soldiers became extremely interested in studying the floor. It was most educational.

The Busy screen winked out, and Blaster nodded to Ratchet. A vidfeed display separated out from the conference call on his HUD, and Blaster held up three fingers. _'Live in three...two...one!'_

The display turned on. Green, purple, and the universe's most obnoxiously smug face looked right at Ratchet. He knew his own external camera showed the tense frown he wore, but Hook only looked smugger. Ratchet’s last dregs of patience took one look at that insufferable face and flew out the medbay door. 

“Well! Hello, Ratchet. We've been ex -- ”

Ratchet interrupted. “What do you want?” There weren't enough frags left in his barrel to give for this kind of posturing. Hook could gloat on his own time.

“If you -- ”

“State your terms.” 

The ice in Ratchet’s voice froze the words into sharp, brittle weapons that sliced through Hook's condesending attitude. The other surgeon’s smirk faltered for a moment and turned to a rigid smile clearly hiding a scowl. “You're in no position to make demands,” Hook hissed, his visor the angry red of deflated pompous egocentrics everywhere. It was hard to get it up when Ratchet kept cutting him off.

Ratchet thoroughly didn't care that he was stealing Hook's thunder. Part of him hoped he could render the mech permanently, professionally impotent via surgical application of words alone. “Terms. Now.” 

It was all about the timing. He waited until Hook’s visor narrowed to its thinnest, angriest glare before sighing and pinching the chevron tip between his optics. “Put Scrapper on the line. We have terms to discuss, and I don't have time to spend talking to Flunkey #5.” 

A snigger came from the other line. Ratchet couldn't tell if it'd come from Jazz or Blaster. It certainly hadn't come from Hook. The Constructicon gaped at him like a stunned fish, visor pale and mouth moving wordlessly. Had he just -- had Ratchet seriously just shooed him out of the way while the big 'bots talked?

The shock splayed across Hook's face almost made it worth suffering his overinflated sense of self-importance. Ratchet knew going straight over a subordinate's head to their superior bred fury in the short-term and resentment in the long, but requesting Scrapper would get him results ASAP. He just had to keep in mind that stomping on Hook's dignity like this meant that payback would be vicious. Hook would likely wait until the Constructicons got what they wanted from him, because Ratchet _did_ think this was personal, but the surgeon had a long memory and a deep well of resentment. He'd have no problem dishing out a creative mauling far in the future on some unfortunate Autobot.

Ratchet would have to deal with that when it happened. He simply had no time to spend on narcissist aft-patting right now. Besides, he had the feeling Scrapper would have taken over the call sooner or later. The whole thing smelled gestalty, like the Secret Santa exchange on Christmas. That always reeked of Protectobots, and, ultimately, led back to Hot Spot's overabundance of holiday cheer. If there was a combiner team involved, then the team leader was at the center of the mischief. Everyone else was only in the way of whom Ratchet needed to talk to.

Not that Hook agreed, and he definitely didn't agree with being dismissed as a flunkey. The surgeon started to puff up, enraged, but Ratchet didn't have time for a yelling match. "Which one **are** you?" he mused, lowering his hand to consider him as if he couldn’t recall. "The surgical engineer one…Long Haul? No. Scavenger? That sounds about right."

Hook flinched back from the screen like it had bitten his nose. 

A hand came into sight and dragged the surgeon off-screen. He didn't fight it. Pure shell-shocked indignation made him malleable, for the moment.

Scrapper replaced him in front of the camera. “Ratchet.” Flat as his tone was, it still managed a reproving scold. Shame on the Autobot for picking on his teammate. 

“Scrapper.” Ratchet's tone made it crystal clear how little he cared. Coddling Hook's giant ego wasn't his job.

A crash and strangled roar came from offscreen. Hook's temper had caught up with current events, it seemed. 

Scrapper's head turned to the side for a second, but Ratchet's pointed vocalizer reset grabbed his attention again. “I propose that we meet in two hours on neutral ground to discuss terms. I will be your contact, and another member of my unit will be standing guard as per neutral ground protocol. We will negotiate with you only.” A.K.A., let’s sit down for a polite discussion of terms without eavesdroppers hanging about making it a faction issue. Just the two of them for a civilized talk.

Right. Not a chance.

“I don’t have time for this,” said the Autobot. His engine growled angrily, downshifting to an irate rumble that projected through the connection. “I have an emergency situation on my hands, and you know it. I’m not going to abandon my patient to go _'discuss terms'_ just because you feel like a face-to-face chat." Jazz hung around every neutral ground anytime slag went down, anyway. Skipping the meeting would spare him a trip to record everything, take it back to the _Ark_ , and play it back for the other officers. 

But just in case Scrapper was under any illusion about the privacy of the matter... "I **am** going to inform my superiors of whatever decision I make, so talking on neutral ground or over an open broadcast frequency is the same blasted thing in the end.” Ratchet hoped that was enough to get his point across, because he was in a hurry, out of patience, and ready to clock a glitch if he got one more excuse for delay. 

“I see.” Blue optics side-eyed the Decepticon hard as Scrapper’s gaze drifted out of focus. An engine snarl from his end returned him to alert a moment later, but Ratchet suspiciously noted a slight cant to the mech's visor. What had that been? “Very...efficient of you." Scrapper reset his vocalizer and straightened into a more formal stance. "Fair enough. I will be as succinct as possible, then. In exchange for handing over the bi-current-enabled electrolyte stable field device, we request your participation in a seven-entry interfacing network. Would you prefer to discuss the details through an open broadcast frequency as well?”

To Scrapper’s credit, this was the first time in a long time that someone managed to take Ratchet’s mind off a dying patient. Scrapper's words trickled down through Ratchet's thoughts in an acid chain reaction, slowly melting all other thoughts into a dumbfounded puddle. Ratchet’s engine stalled out.

His processor kicked back into normal function as the silence on the other line broke. Somehow, Prowl’s extremely soft, somewhat high-pitched, “What?” made everything more real

This wasn't a dream. This wasn't a joke. Those bad holovid war dramas that claimed they were based on real life events might someday have a Ratchet's Life edition. “Interfacing. That’s what you want. A group frag. I...all six of you at once, and me?” Just saying it out loud sounded too surreal to be true.

Someone on the other line said, “Muuuuh?” this time.

Dear Primus, it _was_ true.

“Yes, precisely that.” Scrapper seemed pleased that Ratchet had caught on so quick. 

Oddly, the first thing that came to mind was, "That's it? That's all you want." He stopped himself from adding _'You're sure?'_ because he sure as the Pit didn't want to imply that this wasn't already asking far too much. 

It was just an unexpectedly cheap price tag. As deeply offensive as a frag was personally, it didn't actually cost anything. The Decepticons almost always demanded resources, credits, or energon; tangible _things_ to go with whatever services they extorted. Even when Starscream blackmailed Sunstreaker for a repaint, the result of labor wasn't enough. He also demanded ten cubes of homebrew highgrade, at the very least. A paintjob, after all, had a subjective value that depended on the optic of the beholder. The Decepticons tended to really only tally the hard value of goods, not services. Swindle wasn't the only one whose favors all had monetary amounts attached.

Either the Constructicons considered an interface at the level of actual payment for the device, or demanding a frag was their method of lording over their Autobot medical rival what they _could_ have demanded. A sort of _'we're so superior you couldn't afford our asking price, so we'll make you look a fool by demanding a particularly humiliating trifle.’_ Ratchet was inclined to think it was the latter. It reminded him of the time the Autobots had needed to bribe Skywarp into teleporting onto a meteor to avert its path from Earth. 

Both factions had been aware of the necessity of preventing meteor impact, since they were all stuck here, so recruiting Skywarp had been done under unofficial Decepticon High Command approval. That had not prevented the teleporter from demanding a very public kiss from Skyfire in payment. They'd needed what he could do, and he'd rubbed their faces in that fact. Instead of demanding an insanely costly price they’d have to pay, he had chosen only to humiliate Skyfire.

Starscream, Mirage had reported later, had not been best pleased with his trinemate for that stunt. Skywarp had laughed hysterically for a good hour at the Air Commander’s ire.

So it was entirely likely that Scrapper's choice of payment was only meant to make the medic’s life miserable. It made said medic want to bash the engineer’s helm in with a series of high-density objects when Scrapper nodded, still looking pleased.

Ratchet curled his lip at the cogsucker. “Right, and I'm supposed to believe you only want a 'face because..?” 

The scornful question _ksssh_ ed to a halt as Scrapper took a step back from the camera and held a small object up in front of it. "Because we made you this," he said.

That right there was a bi-current-enabled electrolyte stable field device, indeed. Sitting on the Constructicon's palm, it looked ridiculously tiny. Its design was impossibly complex, but it appeared deceptively unimportant. 

Just the sight of it turned Ratchet’s anger cold. “How do I know it works?”

“It does. We can send you the test logs as proof,” said Scrapper. Visor never leaving Ratchet’s optics, he opened a storage compartment in his chest and put the device inside. No Autobot infiltrator, not even Jazz, would be getting it back out without his say-so. 

"Send them," Ratchet said immediately. "Don't think you can pass fake data by me."

Scrapper glanced to the side and nodded to someone. A few seconds later, an attachment notice popped up over the connection. Blaster intercepted it to begin running download scans. Ratchet waited impatiently.

The Constructicon regarded him evenly as they waited. “It's real, you know." Ratchet's skeptical glare earned an amused tilt of his visor. "Even if the data was false, what alternative do you have? You either risk trusting us or let your patient die without even giving it a try.” 

“Frag you,” Ratchet spat. Frag Scrapper and his stupid gestalt nine ways to the Pit and back. They knew full well Huffer’s life depended on that thing, and they were capitalizing on that fact. He knew that were taking advantage of him, but he _needed_ that device. 

Out of sight of the camera, his hands shook in helpless fury. Slowly, they curled into fists.

“We didn’t have to do it,” Scrapper pointed out in a gentle voice. “We could have thought of another way to get what we want, and you'd be down one Autobot. We didn’t **need** to help you.” He said it almost diffidently, persuasive now that he had the winning hand. The victors could afford to sooth the loser's bruised pride. Scrapper seemed to have some practice trotting out the vaguely apologetic, sympathetic tone. “Don’t you think it’s a small price to pay to save a life?”

The poisonous glare turned inwards. Rage collapsed in on itself, and suddenly the angry medic looked every bit his age. He looked old, defeated, and just plain tired.

Of course it was a small price to pay. Interfacing cost nothing compared to what he'd been prepared to fork over to Swindle. He'd have paid a lot more for the finished device, and here the Constructicons were asking for nothing but his dignity. Ratchet would have labeled the abrupt twist of fate a miraculous gift from Primus if he didn’t hated their collective guts. And he most certainly did, oh yes, because they were a bunch of glitch-ridden bastards whose footsteps marked every battleground they'd been unleashed upon. Ratchet could recognize their handiwork whenever their victims came into his medbay. Their victims ranged from peripheral damage caused by Devastator to personalized projects that left mecha mangled and unrecognizable. He hated every mark they left in their wakes. He hated them.

But still...Blaster cleared the file, and Ratchet shut off his optics to analyze it. For once, the Decepticons weren't lying. The logs showed the genuine product. They could have been falsified, but Ratchet couldn't risk not making a grab for the device _just in case_ it was real.

Scrapper sighed a tad impatiently when the medic continued to stand there, optics off, running the same analysis again and again. "It's not extortion. It's a **gift** , Autobot. We didn't infect your mech, but we've provided the cure. In return, we'd like your cooperation in something we're fairly sure we'll all enjoy." He dimmed his visor and spread his hands in a _'here it is'_ presentation of the idea. "Consider it a nice gesture. A symbol of goodwill that we mean you no harm."

Ratchet barked a dry laugh, optics finally coming back online. The data was real. “A gift! So you'll hand it over even if I say no, eh?”

“There’s a difference between being nice and being stupid.”

“Figured as much.”

Scrapper dropped his hands, and his voice turned cold. "Willing or not, we'll have you. This was simply the easier choice -- for you. Agree, or we'll take what we want at a later date, after your precious patient is dead and recycled.” He lifted his chin, channeling Hook’s arrogance. “Think of it this way: at least you’ll receive compensation for your time. A consultation fee, if you will." 

A stifled giggle from the other line made Ratchet’s frown slip from distaste and shock at that idea to _'what are you laughing about, fragger?'_ His chevron would get a permanent crease, at this rate. Muting the line to Scrapper, he demanded, "What, is kidnapping and violating me funny?"

Jazz waved away the idea, managing to inject a plea for them to wait into the waving as Prowl and Optimus Prime gave him equally dark frowns. It took him a second or two to calm down enough to talk.

“…wait, wait, let me get this straight.” The saboteur's rich tones sounded strained by whatever had him giggling. “They're threatening to abduct you. They're -- an **entire combiner team** did aaaaaall of that," he flailed illustration, "all that effort t' build that thing, t' get sixteen billion fiddly bits I can't even pronounce together, plus bribing Swindle and everything in the deal -- and they think we're gonna believe kidnappin' wasn't the **easy** choice? That they couldn't've done that a dozen times already?"

Put like that, it did seem odd.

"Instead, they did everything and then some to make you a shiny thing. Not just any shiny thing, but the **exact** shiny thing you need pronto. But hey, they can take you by force anytime, honest. They just don’t **feel** like it today. But they’ll kidnap you if they have to, Ratchet! You better cooperate, or else." Jazz shook his finger, mock-scolding. “Next time, it’ll only be moderately shiny.” 

"Careful. They might find out you need an Interocitor next," Blaster added. “Don’t make them build it! They’ll do it!” 

Yeah, that didn't sound right. Frankly, in light of the lengths the Constructicons had gone to set this up, the threat was kind of ridiculous. Ratchet blinked, then snorted in belated disbelief. 

"All this 'cause they want a frag?" Jazz shook his head, smile incredulous. "Primus almighty but they got it **bad**!”

“Jazz, please. This is a serious matter. It's coercion, even if the circumstances are, er, unusual.” 

Behold Optimus Prime, Autobot leader and fountain of euphemisms for delicate situations. 'Unusual circumstances' stood in for 'negotiating for berth rights.' Ratchet pinched the chevron tip between his optics for what felt like the hundredth time that day. 

“This's just bizarre,” Blaster chimed it. “Can Mirage steal the thingamajig? We know where it is, now. Set up a sting, maybe?”

Jazz was already shaking his head, but Ratchet nixed the idea. “Too risky," he grumbled. "It's too delicate. Might have to dig it out of Scrapper during a firefight, if the other Constructicons feel him go down, and that's if we have a good window to intercept in the next week…"

"Not happenin'," Jazz confirmed. "I'll send my mecha in where angels fear to tread, but not when the devil knows we're comin'."

Ratchet's vents flared as he took in a deep breath, bracing himself. "Scrapper is right. This is the best deal we're going to get."

“Ratchet, it’s not **right** \--”

That idealistic, optimistic sense of fairness would get beaten out of the Prime sooner or later. Ratchet wished the blows didn't have to keep coming from the Medical Division, but where else was the inherent unfairness of the universe illustrated almost daily? “Optimus, with all due respect, as the CMO whose patient’s life is on the line **and** the owner of the interfacing equipment currently being negotiated over, it’s not your decision.” 

“I -- yes." The Prime's optics turned a dark shade of tragic, but he turned them away. "Yes, you are right. Are you, um, agreeing to...this?” Stressed twitches showed around the optics of both he and Prowl as the shutters reacted to identical senses of helpless shame over their inability to see a way out of the situation.

Ratchet himself had his face under iron control, stomping on any reaction to what amounted to coerced sex, a beneficial transaction away from outright rape. He had endured worse during the war. From experience, he knew he could get over it eventually. It wouldn't be pleasant, during or after, but this too would pass.

Dwelling on it beforehand would only make it worse, however. He injected dry humor into his voice as he drawled, “Well, I’ve ‘faced worse. At least this one comes with a decent incentive.” The ambulance let his engine rumble irritation as he unmuted the second channel again. “It’s not a shot of engex, but _‘it’s a gift, not extortion,'_ right?” The rumble pitched up into a mocking whine on the last part. Buy the enemy's Chief Medical Officer a drink or a medical device; get laid. That was a recognized wartime strategy, surely. 

One side of Scrapper's visor went up. Someone far off-screen on his side said, “I make a mean blue engex!” in a cheerful voice. 

The other side of his visor quirked up, and the Constructicon leader reset his vocalizer in a delicate cough. "Ah. Well. If you feel it necessary, refreshments can, ah, be provided." His gaze slid to the side, where someone was loudly making a drink list. "Do you have a preference?"

Jazz had his head down in front of the camera, shoulders shaking as he laughed silently. Real threatening, the Constructicons were. They'd gone from abduction threats to _'you want fries with that?'_ in a minute flat.

"Think they'll make that last one to go?" Blaster asked. He seemed unable to believe the Decepticons could be so -- weird. This whole thing had spun out of control sometime around the time Astrotrain made orbit.

Ratchet was having a hard time wrapping his head around the seriousness of the matter, for all that he couldn't forget Huffer. This was just too strange. He turned the idea over and over in his mind like Scrapper's proposal was a square peg for a round hole. So strange. So bizarre. It wasn’t okay, by any means or in any way, but he'd been prepared for hardcore negotiations over limited resources or classified information. This, he didn't quite know how to deal with.

He hadn’t lied when he said he’d had worse. Even officers and medical professionals woke up the morning afterward, looked at their company, and wondered what they'd been thinking. Ratchet had gone through more than his fair share of those mornings-after. Sacrificing his body for the sake of a patient during imprisonment wasn't a foreign concept to him, either. He did what he had to to trade for access to a wounded mech in another prison cell or distract a guard from beating someone to death. 

It wasn’t even that the Constructicons were the most disgusting group of criminals out there, although that detracted from the appeal of the proposal. Had they not been a group of amoral sadistic fraggers, it could have been interesting. How often did a mech get the chance to plug it into a whole gestalt? But they were what they were, and therefore he wasn't interested beyond a split second of might-have-been. Even that fleeting interest died before their cold-sparked manipulation.

It just…it pissed him off! Not only that the blasted Decepticons had managed to corner him via his ethics and medical oaths, but it just -- how slagging stupid was it all? It was in the name of _clanking_. They were chasing his aft for a frag, and meanwhile _one of his patients lay dying._

Except that Huffer didn’t have to die now. He had an offer on the table. If this were a life-or-death split-second call made while a Decepticon sadist dragged a fellow Autobot out for a lingering execution -- he knew himself well enough to know he wouldn't hesitate. The world wouldn’t end just because he interfaced with, one -- er, six ‘Cons. 

Right. Really put some perspective on things, from that angle. Not so bizarrely out of context anymore. A lot less black humor, here, if not any less exasperating.

Ratchet sleeked his vents down and cycled air out, feeling it blow through the narrow openings. “Place?” 

“Is that a yes?” _Eurgh_ , that visor. Scrapper looked so blasted _pleased_ , the slagging oilguzzling rusted camshaft-pumping _cogsucker_.

He was going take that triumphant little gleam and shove it so far up Scrapper's tailpipe the sun _would_ shine there. “Yes, it’s a yes. I said yes. Now give me the, ah-hah, **fragging** coordinates already. All neutral meeting places are too far away as it is. It'll take a while for me to -- ”

“Not today,” Scrapper said. “It would be inconvenient for us.”

Optimus Prime and Prowl slammed back in their chairs at the same moment Jazz and Blaster lurched forward in theirs, hands waving urgently. Too late. The frail dam known as 'patience' snapped in Ratchet's mind, and his temper boiled temper free.

“Wha -- I -- **you just said you wanted to meet in two hours to talk, what in Primus' name do you mean** \-- " A laugh void of all amusement clawed its way past pure unholy rage, and the joints in Ratchet's jaw squealed around it. "Oh, right! I forgot! Medical conditions magically go **dormant** when mecha are plugging like turbofoxes in heat! Silly me, I'd **forgotten** that so-very-relevant fact of life. **How did I ever forget?!** "

Scrapper rocked back on his heels, taken aback. Scavenger’s helm popped into the newly opened space between him and the screen, curious and puzzled. “Why're you so angry? I thought you’d be happy we got you the device-thingy.” 

Ratchet's hands rose as if to strangle the two Constructicons on his HUD, and a cross between an engine rev and two pieces of metal compacting together ground out from under his hood. It was a very upsetting noise for a mechanical life form. Two pairs of hands latched onto Scavenger's helm and shoulders respectively to haul him out of the danger zone.

Leaving Scrapper to face the explosion waiting to happen on his own. The sudden nervous widening of his visor betrayed how little he appreciated his team's lack of support. He brought his hands up in a calming gesture, and his voice took on that well-practiced soothing tone. “Wait, wait. Calm down.” 

Telling him to calm down did absolutely nothing to calm the fuming medic down, but the watching Autobot officers gave Scrapper full points for not retreating into the old _’Technical Difficulties - Please Stand By’_ excuse and calling back later. That never worked, anyway. Ratchet got angrier exponentially by the length of time he was put on hold. The murderous blue optics switched from glowering at the corner of the screen Scavenger had disappeared from, nailing Scrapper with the CMO Glare of Doom.

He bore it well. In Autobot terms, that meant he only took a step back instead of ducking for cover. “I," he reset his vocalizer unnecessarily and steeled his voice. "I take it this conversation is being monitored by your superiors.” 

Ratchet's motor made another unhealthily angered noise. “What does that -- ”

“Is your Prime listening to this conversation?” Scrapper dared interrupt. Prowl appeared to be taking notes on his chutzpah. 

“Yes!” the medic snarled. What did he even care about --

“Will he stand as witness if we gave you the device right now?"

Ratchet’s engine horked into a stall. “ **What?!** ”

Hardly less surprised, Optimus Prime said, "What?" at the same time.

“You've **said** you agree to interfacing with us, but I want your word." The engineer looked evenly into the camera. "We'll give you the device to save the life of your patient, in good faith that you'll honor your end of the agreement, but we want that good faith sworn and witnessed in front of your Prime."

Ratchet stared, speechless.

Scrapper stared back. When Ratchet said nothing, the Constructicon dipped his chin in a decisive nod. "Optimus Prime, please acknowledge."

Blaster turned his hands up in a _'what do I do?'_ gesture at the camera. Optimus Prime blinked a few times, looking to Ratchet. Ratchet's optics dropped to the floor, flicked to the side as his mind raced, and finally turned up to the camera again. The tightness around his mouth said it all.

Optimus Prime nodded to Blaster. The comm. frequency channel Scrapper was on split, showing the Prime on one side, now. "Acknowledged, Scrapper."

Scrapper spared him a nod before turning his attention to Ratchet alone. "Do you promise in front of your Prime that you will honor your part in this agreement?”

It was surprising, to say the least, that a Decepticon trusted an Autobot’s loyalty. Scrapper was giving up their half of a bargain before payment, surrendering their leverage. The Constructicons would have literally nothing but Ratchet's oath as collateral. Even more surprising than Scrapper handing over their advantage, it was downright _disturbing_ that the Constructicons apparently knew that without bringing his loyalty to the Prime into play, Ratchet might have lied his aft off to them. They were trusting the Prime's honor, but his only in relation to the Prime.

That showed an alarming familiarity with how his mind worked. He'd have taken the device and never delivered his half of the bargain without hesitation, but swearing on it in front of Optimus changed everything. Grudgingly at best, but still. He couldn't lie, not when the promise was phrased _that_ way. Ratchet wondered just how long the Constructicons had been watching him to get that thorough an understanding of him.

Jazz watched Scrapper as if spotting a fascinating new specimen for observation. Prowl looked unwillingly impressed. 

Frag it. Huffer better not whine _once_ at him for what was left of the century.

“Fine. You have my word. In front of my Prime, as you put it,” Ratchet grated out. His arms crossed defensively over his chest. For some reason, he felt exposed. "Happy?"

Scrapper didn't answer. He looked to the other half of the split screen, first. 

Optimus Prime, regal as ever, gave him a solemn nod. "Heard and witnessed, Scrapper. Ratchet." He nodded to them both, and his image blipped back over onto the Autobot-only channel a second later. Only then did his hand come up to cover his optics.

Ratchet grimaced. Scrapper looked satisfied, and Optimus Prime looked ashamed to exist. Meanwhile he felt -- ambivalent. This changed things. He was still angry, he certainly was that, and it didn’t make Scrapper any less of a slagger, but it changed things. It meant that the device worked, for one thing. This wasn’t some kind of elaborate hoax. It might still be a Constructicon plot to humiliate or otherwise harm him personally, but he didn’t need to keep on stomping on that bubble of hope anymore. Huffer was going to live.

A rough cough broke the silence. His attention turned back to the screen. 

“I guess I could…assist with the procedure,” Hook mumbled off-screen. He sounded sullen and weirdly belligerent, as if offering wrenched every bolt in his body the wrong direction. Scrapper's head turned slowly toward him, and for two whole seconds, stunned disbelief painted openly across the Constructicon leader’s visor. “The reading fluctuation margins are quite high, but I've been doing the field tests. I am familiarized with the patterns by now. I could...monitor them for you." Scrapper stared. Long Haul and Scavenger leaned into sight in the background, they stared so hard at the other side of the room. Hook coughed again, obviously uncomfortable. "I mean, for your, ah, Autobot. Patient.”

“I don’t need your help with the readings,” Ratchet blurted quickly, equally flabbergasted by Hook lowering himself to a nurse's duties. Hook, of all mecha, offering assistance? Paired with the general awkward lameness of that delivery, it made Ratchet want to squirm in his armor. “But, uhhh, thank you. For the, erm, offer.” Right, well, he wouldn't be winning any awards for smooth acceptance speeches. 

No one would blame him. Exchanging polite words with Hook made his back strut shiver.

The near future was going to be a very awkward time for all.


	3. Chapter 3

**[* * * * *]**  
 **Part Three**  
 **[* * * * *]**

 

 _‘Success!’_ Devastator's disconnected processor thrummed through them. If the Constructicons had combined anytime during the two weeks between Ratchet’s call and the date -- not a _date_ -date, just a date-on-the-calendar-date, because _date_ -dates were thoroughly unprofessional and Hook kept repeating that every time anyone even vaguely _thought_ about the upcoming date -- Devastator would have shouted that word to the skies. Triumph wound through the gestalt links on a level so deep it felt like they were connected without having to combine.

Scrapper had done his duty. The Constructicons vibrated in anticipation of the results.

The bi-current-enabled electrolyte stable field device had been delivered as promised, on time and without the slightest hint that they were impatiently waiting for Ratchet's half of the deal. The Autobot who'd met them at the shoreline had swiped the device out of their hands, run a scan over it to verify it was the real deal, and taken off with his sirens wailing. Sheesh. Mech had acted like lives were at stake.

Well, _a_ life had been at stake, but not anymore. Everything had gone smoothly. The small whiny Autobot was now on his way to full recovery, slow and painful but steady. At no point in the entire process had Ratchet stopped being anything but nasty.

No, to be fair, he'd been nice enough to his patient. He'd been positively gentle, bedside manner in place as he worked to replace the liquefied joints and ease the pain of damaged metal sloughing off as new metal built up underneath. His fellow medics and Autobots had gotten the sharper side of his temper, but he hadn't been unacceptably rude. He was a professional and an officer, after all.

Anytime the Constructicons came up, however, the bets were off. The Constructicons hadn't even needed to approach the Cassetticons for footage from the Autobot base. Frenzy and Rumble raced into the repairbay fighting over who got to throw it at them. The midgets didn't even seem to mind that Red Alert had found and booby-trapped their usual vantage points for the medbay. They recorded everywhere else and gleefully put together a highlight reel of Ratchet's best insults. It was an ongoing torrent of verbal abuse heaped on the Constructicons.

"What kind of gratitude is this?" Hook sat back in his chair and huffed, as he had all day, every single day since the exchange. " **Starscream** is more grateful than that decrepit, obsolete model."

Ooo, ouch. 

Accurate, though. Scrapper had to concede that.

Bonecrusher had to comment, of course. "Dunno. He's got a better turn of phrase than the Scream-sicle. He kinda implied you'd do a Honda if it flashed its headlights at you in that last one." He tilted his head to the side to contemplate the quality of Ratchet’s subtext in the insults being directed at his teammate. "What’d you **do** , Hook? He'd got a real cable-tangle blockage for you, even if he can't remember your name half the time." 

Hook puffed up, infuriated all over again by the reminder. Being unable to tell the Constructicons apart seemed to be an ongoing theme in Ratchet's muttered spiel of resentment, and none of them could tell if he was being serious. Scrapper had to admit it was kind of insulting, but at the same time, he felt a touch of pride that Ratchet knew _him_ by name. Heh. That's right, _he_ was the important Constructicon.

Long Haul laughed out loud at Ratchet spitting a curse at _'minion number five, whatever his name is.'_ "Frag, can we filter out all the other Autobints talking and get just his voice? That's a slagging good background soundtrack to work to," the hauler called across the repairbay. "I want that _'the surgical idiot one'_ part on repeat!" 

Mixmaster did a beatbox rhythm over in his lab, banging his hands on the counter. Right then, the video played a long, obscenity-laced comment strongly insinuating that Hook's interface cables could be traded for a toaster's electrical cord without anyone noticing, for all the skill he probably had at using them. Raucous laughter burst out the chemist's lab as beatboxing and comment synced up in a short, sweet moment of perfect timing.

Long Haul fell against Bonecrusher, laughing so hard his fuel gauge wobbled. Bonecrusher wasn't much better. They propped each other up. Scrapper did his best to wipe amusement from his visor as a teakettle whistle came from Hook's direction. He had no idea why Ratchet hated the surgeon so much, but the insults were getting increasingly vicious as the days counted down. Creative, often speculative, and wince-worthy, they kept spilling out of Ratchet in an unending flow of vitriol.

A week from the not-a- _date_ -date, Rumble swaggered into the repairbay to hand over a ‘Best Of’ compilation. It featured nonstop insults of -- surprise! -- Hook. Without mentioning him once by name, which was quite a feat considering that it was an hour-long mash-up. Scrapper buried himself in a new set of blueprints to hide his amusement. Long Haul, Bonecrusher, and Mixmaster didn't bother. They laughed their afts off. 

Hook promptly had a snit.

Lacking the target he wanted, he lost his slag at Mixmaster. The chemist closed the lab door and ignored him, shutting him out in favor of creating a lovely line of drinks and treats not seen off Cybertron since the middle of the war. He intended for Ratchet to remember _his_ name.

Hook savagely turned his tirade on Bonecrusher, since the bruiser was still laughing loudly. The screaming fight was undignified, loud, and ended in violence.

Sort of. Hook threw one punch, and that's when Bonecrusher took him down. The surgeon was a great many things, on or off the battlefield, but he wasn't the heavyweight of the team. When Bonecrusher made up his mind to take another Constructicon down, that Constructicon went down, usually hard enough to dent the floor. Hook's tantrum continued from facedown in the dent, where Bonecrusher decided to pin him until he tired himself out. 

Hook normally recovered his sense of dignity pretty soon in these circumstances. Something about being sat upon reminded him that he was a surgical engineer, not a common brawling soldier. He usually calmed down to a sulk after fifteen minutes or so.

On the other hand, Ratchet's sniping, snarking video had been put on repeat. It continued to play in the background, amusing the other Constructicons. That wasn’t normal. Hook screeched like a banshee, kicking and bucking as he fought Bonecrusher's weight. Bonecrusher rested an elbow on the back of his helm and settled in to listen to the best of ornery Ratchet. 

It became, after an hour, an epic internal feud fight. They hadn't had one of those since the early days of the combiner team.

Scrapper didn't intend to get involved, but Hook kept hollering loud enough to be heard outside the repairbay. "Mute it!" he snapped, standing up from his workbench and whirling around to glare down at the disgruntled surgeon. "Do you want everyone to hear you acting like a Stunticon?"

"Buff my crane hoist!"

" **What** did you say to me?" Scrapper's voice darkened as Hook's disrespect sank in, and even Bonecrusher turned a disbelieving look down at the surgeon he sat upon.

Scavenger chose that unfortunate moment to jump into the middle of things with, "You heard him!" All three mecha stared at him, two incredulous and one utterly furious. Scavenger shrugged. "What? You did. He told you to buff his crane hoist. I think he meant you should -- "

" **Yes** , Scavenger, thank you, I **got that** ," Scrapper said, forcefully cutting him off. He turned a burning gaze on Hook. 

Who glared back, still squirming in an attempt to get free. "You can grease my axles while you're at it," he suggested crudely. Anger made him reckless.

Bonecrusher abruptly stood up and took two steps to the side. "Yeeeeah, you're on your own on this one." 

Long Haul's laughter had tapered off to mean sniggers about five minutes into Hook's snitfit, but he lost it again at Hook's hissed comment about where Bonecrusher could stuff it. "I want this in the mixtape. Hook-Ratchet duet. I'm telling you, I could work to this all day."

"You can frag a Conehead, too," Hook snarled at him, and Mixmaster stuck his head out the lab door long enough for a dramatic, "Ooooo."

That really didn't help matters. By the time Hook clambered ungracefully back to his feet, he'd insulted Bonecrusher, Scrapper, Long Haul, _and_ Mixmaster. Scrapper's visor flamed warning and Long Haul's hands curled into tight fists, but the surgeon tossed caution through the spacebridge and narrated a convoluted ancestry that started with nuts and bolts and ended in a rusted old Model-T Ford sitting in a junkyard somewhere in the USA. Bonecrusher went dangerously quiet and put his back against a wall, aware he was too angry to go near anyone else without snapping. Scavenger, wary as he always was when Bonecrusher got like this, retreated into his storage room.

Sometimes, it was painfully clear how thin the line was between a functioning team and a hot mess. Trust glued them together until it didn’t.

Long Haul put himself between Scavenger and Bonecrusher, defending the power shovel peeking out from the back room. The wave of fear and protective aggression through the gestalt links didn’t help calm anyone. Bonecrusher and Scrapper's engines howled in predatory harmony. They stepped closer together without thinking about it, facing Hook down. The surgeon sneered at them and upped his volume as he headed into a rant against their personal hygiene, lack of talent, and overall appearance. 

Mixmaster guffawed at his bitingly creative description of Bonecrusher's altmode, which immediately sorted him into Team Hook. He seemed uneasy with that as soon as he figured out what he'd done, but too late. The tension was building up to an inevitable peak where everyone would take sides and lay into each other. The chemist now stood opposite Bonecrusher and Scrapper in the onrushing conflict, somewhat balancing the equation but mostly just escalating the situation.

Team Hook and Team Not-Hook squared off, proud, offended, and unsettled in equal measure. Scavenger locked himself in his storage room when Long Haul chose a side. It wasn't a good time to be a Constructicon.

The other Decepticons wisely avoided the repairbay until flammable objects stopped flying. Minor injury repairs could wait. Detached _limbs_ could wait. Nobody wanted to get in the middle of a gestalt fight.

The Stunticons and Combaticons hung around in the halls nearby, waiting to see how the supposedly 'normal' combiner team ended this abnormal spat. Onslaught hoped that Megatron would have to get involved. His team was constantly being compared to the Constructicons, much to the Combaticons’ detriment. He really wanted to see Megatron chastise the golden team, for once. Motormaster just wanted to see how many nicks and dings everyone had in the aftermath. The Stunticons looked like they’d walked through a hurricane anytime he had to assert his authority. It’d be nice to see the Constructicons showing similar damage. The slagging repairbots _weren’t_ perfect examples of how a combiner team should work, and now everyone would see!

They were both disappointed. Scrapper stalked out of the repairbay two days later, right on time for a previously scheduled meeting. His plating was polished to a blinding shine, although his expression was set to _'kill.'_ He turned it on anyone who stood in his way. Onslaught and Motormaster decided it wasn’t such a good idea to taunt their fellow gestalt leader and buggered off before he spotted them.

Scavenger bounced out of the repairbay on Scrapper’s heels to zip down the corridor, turn at the intersection, and tackle Vortex. “Just who I need to see! C’mere.”

“Whoa, hey -- oh! Ehehehe, alright then.” There were fingers digging into his rotor hub array, and Vortex was fine with that. He shrugged at Brawl as he was dragged off by the hub toward the repairbay. He had no idea what had brought on the bold grab, but he sure wasn’t going to say no.

Swindle’s post was in the opposite direction, at the other intersection. The conmech had just enough time to look down the corridor and yelp, "No!" before the 'copter was whisked away behind closed doors.

Inside the repairbay, the situation had been sorted out. Hook kept his mouth shut, lips set in a thin, disapproving line as he sterilized the repairbay like it had offended him. Bonecrusher helped, scrubbing through purple paint to leave silver scrapes everywhere he cleaned. They didn’t speak to each other. Every once and a while, their shoulders clanked as they passed too close to one another. Mixmaster kept his lab locked and threatened to poison anyone who even knocked, but that was just Mixmaster under a deadline. Long Haul parked in altmode in the corner earned an inquisitive look from Vortex, but then Scavenger had the Combaticon too busy to care about the aftermath of the Constructicon spat.

Scavenger's joy eased everyone's bad mood. Give him a toy to play with, and his mood could drug the whole team into subdued happiness. Give him an interactive toy named Vortex, and the overloads relaxed even Hook. That had probably been Scavenger's plan all along. Euphoria washed through the gestalt links in a come-and-go tide of warm, blurry pleasure.

Since Long Haul helped chain Vortex down on the repairbay floor, there was more coming than going in the following days. The 'copter didn’t stand a chance. Scavenger was like the Energizer Bunny of interfacing, and he was on a self-appointed Team Morale Mission. 

Vortex didn't struggle too hard. He was pleasantly sapped after a while, and he liked being held down. It helped that he thought Onslaught and Swindle freaking out was hilarious. They kept pinging the repairbay for updates on his status, since his comm. frequency was inexplicably blocked. 

He also thought whips, chains, and the lack of a box meant he was moderately safe. Bonecrusher and Hook exchanged glances and shook their heads at his misplaced confidence. It wasn't that Vortex was ignorant or stupid. It was just that when Scavenger got it in his helm to collect something, really _collect_ something, the box didn’t need to be visible. Nothing would stop him. The only thing keeping Vortex from the collection was the Constructicons' shared obsession with someone else at the moment.

That, and the lack of escape attempts was sort of novel, for Scavenger. He wanted to play more than he wanted to collect…for now.

Scrapper came back from the meeting to rhythmic grunting clangs from one side of the repairbay. Mixmaster yelled through the lab door that he’d tear out the vocalizer of whoever took the last barrel of formaldehyde _with his teeth_. Hook and Bonecrusher were standing on repair berths, intensely scrutinizing the ceiling for stray germs. Long Haul pushed past him to go find a list of things Mixmaster couldn’t live without, swear to Primus. Vortex squealed, or maybe that was his rotor blades sheering off as they spun against the floor. Scavenger huffed hot air and bent over him, grinding closer, harder, and yanking at the chains as their cables -- well, now that was just filthy, kinky, wrong, and shouldn’t be done in public.

Scrapper closed the door. There, problem solved.

He went over to inspect the duo writhing on the floor for quality assurance, as per his responsibility as team leader. Unfortunately for his vague idea of straightening out what had to be a crimped connector -- unless Vortex really did bend against his specs that way -- his path entered the cleaning frenzy's scanner range.

“Is that **rust**?” Hook demanded, tight-lipped. Bonecrusher looked up, alerted by the surgeon’s sudden change of focus. A Brillo pad the size of a minobot was brandished. “You brought **rust** into my repairbay.”

Scrapper looked down at his hands. Flakes of rust caked the knuckles. “That was what the meeting was about,” he said mildly. “The accelerated rate of metal decay when exposed to this planet’s ocean water is causing leaks in several of the sublevels. Megatron wants us to find a solution in conjunction with Starscream’s vent-harvesting energon project. I went out with the Air Commander to inspect the outer hull.”

Out of that information, Hook zeroed in on one important fact. “You were in **sea water** ,” he hissed like an offended cat. “Did you even bother to go through decontamination at the airlock?”

“I hit the washrack on the way back.” Like every Decepticon who pulled barnacle duty. Decontaminating every nook and cranny after exposure to Earth’s various forms of filth would be a senseless, never-ending waste of time. “I’m fine.”

“ **Fine?!** ”

Hook aimed high. Bonecrusher went low. Scrapper only had two seconds to see them crouch before they launched off the repair berths at him.

A second chorus of grunts and clanks joined the Scavenger and Vortex duet soon after. This one involved less moaning and more soap foam. More people, too, as they tripped Long Haul onto the pile the moment he stepped back into the repairbay. Mixmaster had to stomp out and retrieve his supplies himself. He kicked both piles of mecha as he went by. Vortex seemed into it.

Yeah, Devastator’s state of mind definitely influenced its components. Scrapper listened to the nervous, giddy thrum in the back of his head and was cautiously pleased. A success, indeed.

Except.

He wasn’t Hook. He didn’t get his crankshaft in a twist over the lack of gratitude from the Autobot, but he had expected, to some extent…something. Some sort of positive response. The outpouring of caustic, coolant-curdling insults at one and all and Hook in particular surprised him. It annoyed him that none of the predicted interest was being returned. Ratchet wasn’t reacting right.

During his next bridge shift, he contacted Frenzy to request some footage directly, hoping the Cassettes had been so free in handing over only negative information. It’d fit their sense of humor to frame Ratchet as a rampaging rage machine by editing out anything positive they saw.

Frenzy handed over the additional footage with much snickering and optic ridge waggling. Scrapper didn’t have time to wonder what brought on the lewd look, as Soundwave decided to finally make his move.

Some things in life were inevitable. Death. Admiring Starscream’s legs. Gossip. Optimus Prime giving a speech. Soundwave finding out any and everything.

Recruiting Astrotrain for the rumor mill had only hastened Soundwave’s involvement. The recent Things Arranging had turned the Comm. Officer’s head already, but the Cassettes had kept their end of the deal. The Constructicons had kept the crusade for Autobot medic booty on the down-low, and Frenzy and Rumble had distracted themselves with the treat buffet Mixmaster ‘gifted’ them. Soundwave’s narrow visor had followed Scrapper around anytime the engineer had made an appearance, but nothing could be confirmed. Soundwave hadn’t known precisely _what_ was going on, but he’d known there was _something_ going on.

Then the Autobots contacted the Decepticon repairbay directly, and the secret was out. Even if Soundwave couldn’t crack Blaster’s encryption in time, he found out about the agreement with Ratchet simply because the Autobots were talking about it. The shortstacks spilled their info the second their boss asked for it.

Leading to today’s silent stare-down. It was of the most intense mask-to-mask non-verbal confrontations ever witnessed by the Decepticon ranks. Visor stared into visor, unblinking. Soundwave, not known for his expressiveness at the best of times, shut down to nothing but the occasional twitch of a finger. Scrapper became a statue of himself, unmoving as he faced Soundwave like an immobile object meeting a rock. Somewhere around the fifteen minute mark, they crossed their arms at the exact same time. The red of their visors deepened, Soundwave’s deep crimson against distinctive Constructicon garnet. When they took a step forward, again in sync, the hulking construction frame stood above the slighter communication specialist, but the intimacy suggested by how close they now stood didn’t match how completely impassive they stayed.

Fifteen minutes ticked toward twenty. Twenty-five. At thirty minutes, the shift change happened around them in a muted scurry of Decepticons trying not to be noticed. Nobody wanted to interrupt whatever had the air between the two officers thick enough to slice.

With the sole exception of Starscream, because it was _Starscream_. He tolerated five minutes of this nonsense in the middle of his shift before snapping, which might have been a record. Standing up from his duty station, he turned a baleful glare at them and wondered in an irritatingly loud voice how wonderful it would be to have so much free time that he could spend it standing around doing nothing while everyone else _worked_.

Scrapper and Soundwave, who had been exchanging polite threats regarding the aiding of enemy forces and medical exam health hazards via internal commlink, mutually agreed that they could continue their business in a more inconspicuous location. They retreated to go find it. Starscream’s suspicion nipped at their heels as they went.

The stare-down resumed in an unused corridor in one of the sublevels, but the interruption had given Scrapper time to regroup. He’d been prepared for Soundwave. One either allowed for Soundwave’s ever-watchful presence while Arranging Things, or Soundwave rearranged the final arrangement to suit himself. Scrapper wasn’t going to allow that.

Soundwave valued his own armor, and the armor of his Cassettes. A ping from Hook reminding him that mandatory maintenance was fast approaching…well. Timing was everything. A convenient ‘gift’ offered as a courtesy, one officer to another, just greased the gears to move things along. The Constructicons and Soundwave had a longstanding working relationship. This small incident could be ignored for the small price of some favors and Hook not playing with the internal parts of anyone Soundwave valued, including the Cassette carrier himself. So many persnickety little parts. So many things that could go wrong today, tomorrow, or even years down the road.

Besides, both officers held the opinion that Huffer was only slightly more useful to the Autobot cause than a decorative paperweight. Aiding his chances of survival made little difference to the war effort. It was more that the Constructicons wanted to interface the enemy Chief Medical Officer that required real investigation, what with the whole treason issue that Scrapper would rather not be brought up in any way. Soundwave wanted to know, know absolutely, that the Constructicons weren’t traitors. 

There was a method to assure that to his satisfaction, unpleasant as it was anywhere, much less in a grungy corridor that smelled of fish. Scrapper clenched his fists and submitted to it. The Constructicons weren’t traitors. If Soundwave required proof, then he would give it. If that meant the Comm. Officer had to page through his head, well, it wasn’t nice, it wasn’t fun, but it got the job done. Technopathy _was_ the most efficient way to ascertain his loyalties.

Scrapper had the weirdest feeling that as Soundwave peered into his head, Devastator’s disconnected processor peered back.

It took a while, but eventually Soundwave’s fingertips left the sides of his helm. Scrapper saw double for a couple minutes afterward. The odd urge to swat the other Decepticon aside rose ( _’Devastator destroy!’_ ), but Soundwave stood stock still as the Constructicon’s visor flickered rapidly. He shook his head, and the urge went away. 

“Is that proof enough?” he said, vocalizer clicking.

Soundwave inclined his head. “Acceptable.” He had his proof. The Constructicons weren’t out to frag Ratchet as an act of treason. It was a whim, an interest shared between loyal Decepticons, not potential traitors. 

Everything from there on out was just persuading Soundwave to indulge the Constructicons’ new, um, ‘hobby.’ A broad combination of threat, bribe, and smooth-talking tilted the argument in the Constructicons’ favor, in the end. It put them further into Soundwave's debt than Scrapper was comfortable with, but only until the next major battle. Oh, how the balance would change the moment Soundwave needed a pain-patch during surgery.

Scrapper had the nagging suspicion that Soundwave & Co. found such displays of extortion skills more than a bit sexy. It would explain the excessive amount of leering the Cassettes had been doing at the build team lately. 

So it took three hours for Scrapper to get around to actually reviewing the footage Frenzy had given him. The Constructicon leader sat at his workbench and dedicated some time to watching the wild Ratchet in his natural habitat.

The cranky old glitch didn't take nearly as good of care of himself as he did his patients. Hook would want to rebuild the mech's joints if Scrapper let him hear the way Ratchet creaked when bending over. Scrapper was faintly appalled by how little the other two Autobot medics catered to Ratchet's aged body. Why weren't they taking better care of him? And why didn't they do more around the Autobot medbay? Ratchet was doing _menial_ chores between patients. How absurd. 

The other two medics weren't _disrespectful_ , per se, but they barely deferred to him. Where was the preferential treatment? Ratchet should have his ration brought to him. He shouldn't even _be_ on rations! That other ambulance should be automatically handing over part of his own ration to fill his superior's cube to the brim. The general practitioner medic should be consulting with Ratchet, letting the CMO show off his skills and keeping him involved in every case. Both subordinate medics should be _creating_ opportunities to fawn over and flatter their superior. 

For that matter, the patients should be scrambling to donate their own rations, jumping on the opportunity to rack up small favors to inch their names up on Ratchet's internal priority list. For Primus' sake, the idiots should at least know better than to mouth off to the medic who hauled their battered carcasses off the battlefield!

Everything Scrapper watched was subtly off. All was not right in the Autobot medbay. It wasn't blatant, and he couldn't quite pin it down, but that actually was about right for what he suspected. Open rebellion and insubordination would be too obvious, just as Ratchet's bad mood seemed directed at the world in general instead of anyone in specific -- except for the Constructicons. They, at least, had done something the medic could point to as enemy action.

Scrapper's conclusion was that the CMO was still angry at them, and it seemed justifiably so. Scrapper sat back in his seat and crossed his arms, worrying the problem over in his mind. He hadn't taken into account the interior power dynamics of the _Autobots_ while Arranging Things, and it looked like that was coming back to bite him in the aft.

Frag it. He'd always assumed the Autobots were soft, polite, and sweet to each other, but slag him if he wasn't seeing a mech suffering a loss of face. The Autobots must have taken the trade as a sign that Ratchet wasn't as powerful or well-connected as previously believed. Standard Ratchet procedure, so far as the Constructicons had observed, was to be mildly irritated at everyone. It was a professional cover of an inappropriate relief response, equivalent to Hook doting on Megatron's every need like a particularly charming nurse whenever the Decepticon Lord took critical damage. It was either flutter about nicely or throw a bucket of swearwords at their Lord's helm for being such an idiot, and everyone knew which one wouldn't end in execution.

Ratchet had dry humor and a nasty disposition on the battlefield every time they’d observed him, so short-tempered and brusque in the medbay seemed normal. This violent frothing hatred toward the Constructicons was out of place. It had to be displaced anger. Hook got the same way toward the team when he wasn't lead surgeon in a hospital, because Primus knew taking it out on the head of a hospital wasn’t a good idea. _Scrapper_ knew what it was like to keep his head down when someone else had favor. 

No wonder Ratchet insulted the Constructicons up one side and down the other. His anger had brewed into a foul rage as time ticked down toward his half of the bargain, but he couldn’t lash out at fellow Autobots without repercussions. The Constructicons had expected the medic to be miffed at being outmanuevered, but nowhere near the amount of barking tossed at them since the device had been delivered. This subtle, vague snubbing by the other medics and patients made sense of far too much of what they'd been hearing.

Ratchet was consolidating his powerbase, balancing between showing his claws and playing _nice_. That's why he wasn't ripping a strip off his lax coworkers or warming up toward the Constructicons. When an officer felt his rank wobble, he walked careful. One good challenge, and demotion loomed.

It was so obvious, now.

The Constructicons had gone out of their way to intercept information about him, then act on it. They'd made a complex and expensive device for the medic, spending time and money on something that risked disciplinary fall-out for saving an enemy patient, as well as risked their fuel pumps if they were caught fragging that enemy. That should have been impressive enough, but they'd obviously spent considerable time piecing together an elaborate plan to bypass those risks _and_ outmaneuver the medic himself. The last time they'd gone to these lengths to extort a Decepticon, the object of their affections had begun buzzing with charge long before they reached the _‘or else’_ part of the negotiation. The threats had been the finishing touch on a truly stupendous seduction, and the mech had been suitably turned on.

Scrapper was rather proud of his team and how they'd cornered the medic. This had been one of their better courting efforts. He'd even gotten the Prime to witness Ratchet's oath. That was an official Autobot blessing on the deal, meaning that nobody on their end would interfere, _and_ it trapped Ratchet in the bargain.

It had seemed a brilliant idea at the time. Now he was regretting it. Scrapper had wondered if reacting negatively to flattery was an Autobot mannerism, but now he was ready to bang his head against his workbench at his own lack of foresight. Bringing other Autobots into the call had made it official, yes, but that also meant making a public event out of what should have been an under-the-table deal. Everyone over in the _Ark_ probably knew by now that Ratchet had been outmatched by the Decepticons. 

That boosted Scrapper's ego, but it had to be nonstop mockery on Ratchet's end. The rations, the cheerful subordinate medics, the patients who complained, the careful way Ratchet treated the recovering whiny glitch...he had to hate that mech. Scrapper would, in his place. Being the head of the medbay, however, he had enough control to redirect that seething resentment onto more appropriate targets. Namely, the Constructicons.

Especially Hook, for some reason. Although they were, indirectly and as Hook never forgot, professional rivals. Maybe Ratchet cared more about that than Scrapper had originally thought. Soothing the medic's ruffled feathers wouldn't be an easy task if this involved professional pride.

This was a problem.

"What?" Long Haul propped his hip against the workbench as Scrapper drummed his fingers on it. "What is it?"

Scrapper narrowed his visor at his neglected blueprints. Megatron's latest super-weapon was just going to have to wait. "We have work to do."

Magic words. Constructicons stopped what they were doing and turned in his direction. Vortex whined quietly and gave a feeble little jerk in protest. Scavenger yanked on whatever handful of internal anatomy he currently held, and pale pinkish-purple fluid spurted across the floor. The 'copter laughed high and hysterical, breaking into a coughing fit as his ventilation system began to fill. He didn't sound sane, but did he ever?

"Someone keep him alive," Scrapper said absently. "Onslaught's pinging me again. And get Mixmaster's drink menu. Where's the floorplan for the warehouse?"

The medic clearly hadn’t caught on to how much thought they'd put into this. Another Decepticon would have known right off the bat, as the Communications Division had proven, but Ratchet was an Autobot. They had another power structure going on. It was possible he was too distracted by being made a laughingstock to realize how flattered he should be.

Scrapper didn’t know what was wrong with the Autobots -- seriously, how often did an entire combiner team go courting? Were they blind? Could they _not_ recognize how desirable their CMO was? -- but to be perfectly frank, it didn’t bother him. Their loss; his gain.

The Constructicons had what they wanted. Bringing Ratchet around to their way of thinking just meant they'd have to put some effort into making him see the benefits to this arrangement. They could manage that.

And once they got the Autobot connected, surely he'd think differently. Plugging in could set the mood no matter how sour Ratchet started out, and once charge melted his joints, he'd see the light. 

The thought alone kept the Constructicons' fans spinning on erratically throughout the night.

Success, indeed. 

 


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This final chapter has not been edited.

**[* * * * *]**  
**Part Four**  
**[* * * * *]**

 

Ratchet did one final round of the medbay consoles. Honest. Last check before he left. This was the final time around.

When he doubled back to study Huffer's chart, a loud, dramatic sigh came from across the medbay. First Aid tapped his food and gave the week's work roster an exasperated, pointed look. According to the duty shifts he’d scheduled himself, he'd been off-duty for hours now. He should have been out the door and gone by now, or at least holed up in his office where he wasn't working over the medic currently trying to do his own work around him.

Ratchet didn't guiltily slink out of the medbay under First Aid's watchful gaze, but only because he didn't do guilt. Or slinking, for that matter. Harrumphing at being not-shooed out of his medbay might have happened if he wasn't well aware of his own reaction to other medical personnel muddling up the schedule. The shifts were set up for a reason. Staying in the medbay fussing would have earned a far less gentle hint to scram if it'd been him. 

First Aid kept tapping his foot until the door closed. That was as close to a boot to the aft as the junior medic got. He must have been at the end of his patience.

Ratchet lingered outside the medbay for a couple minutes. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust First Aid to run the place during an emergency, but some part of him resisted leaving. A nagging thought kept popping up in the back of his processor that insisted his departure was part of the next Decepticon plan. If getting him out of the _Ark_ was part of an elaborate hoax to orchestrate maximum casualties because he wasn't in the medbay...as opposed to an elaborate sort of extortive booty-call.

Hmm. Put it that way, and Ratchet wasn't sure how he preferred today to turn out as. Well, obviously he preferred the one where people didn't die, but still. Interfacing the Constructicons. _Eurgh._

He'd expected some kind of cleverly disguised tampering on the device, but it'd been clean. If they'd done something to it, neither he nor anyone he recruited to scrutinize it had found it. As much as he’d looked, it had been in perfect working order and done its job. Huffer was recovering beautifully. 

The fact that it _was_ in perfect order just meant that the catch was elsewhere. Ratchet knew Decepticons. There was _always_ a catch. 

The unseen catch worried him, but nowhere near as much as when he'd had a patient's life on the line. Consquences of getting fragged by the enemy would fall on him, not Huffer. Ratchet lingered by the medbay door because it could still be a scheme to get him away from the _Ark_ , but he doubted it. This all seemed very personal. 

Jazz had nailed it on the head: the Constructicons had it bad for him. He had no idea why, no idea what he'd done or said to draw their collective attention, but apparently he had. All right, on his helm be it. He had to pay their price, and the price was an interface.

An unpleasant price, but not necessarily a dangerous one. If there was one thing Ratchet felt prepared for, it was secure hardlining. His job required him to almost religiously update his firewalls in order to pass those updates on during antiviral checks and regular downloads. Medics came armored to the brim in partitions and software protection, anyway. Even before this, he'd been required by his job to hook up to questionable mecha. Any Autobot who'd been out of sight of his patrol partner for more than two minutes could have a sleeper virus from Bombshell or Soundwave. Any Decepticon prisoner dragged into his medbay could be rigged to hash anyone who dared link in without adequate firewalls. Medical processors didn't put up tinfoil between patient and medic. Medics were walled in steel.

That had been standard even before the war. An extensive unit of medical training focused solely on personal protection. The Academy hammered it into every graduate. Anyone -- even the most cooperative, healthy patient -- could be a threat when a medic went in to work on anything more complex than light routine maintenance. 

Which was normal and healthy. A closed system _shouldn't_ tolerate probes from an external source, regardless of how theoretically good the poking was for it. Structural Defense had been a mandatory course at the Academy, and students who didn’t install sturdy defenses and study hard on how to deal with malware very quickly became interested in other careers. In the early days of each semester as new classes began, the students often became patients themselves. The worst generally slipped through before they even connected themselves to actual patients. The teachers could lecture and lecture, but practical experience getting laid out during a simulated standard maintanence check made a much deeper impression on the up-and-coming medical students. 

Ratchet couldn't count the number of times Structural Defense had saved his aft. He'd treated everything from uncooperative mecha who actively fought back, to delerious patients infected with malware of every kind, to operating system abnormalities and mutations, to circuits and wires flash-frying as circuit breakers malfunctioned. The list of complications went on and on, and that was even before the civil war begun, which brought an array of new and creative ways for medical staff to get brutalized via cabling alone. 

Thus Ratchet, Chief Medical Officer of the Autobot base on Earth and one of the oldest, most experienced mecha in his field of expertise, felt pretty confident in his ability to fend off any software attack while plugging around… Which did not mean that he hadn’t taken extra precautions.

The first thing he did after the call with the Constructicons had ended, and once every officer had resumed his duties (considerably stunned in some cases), was hunting down Jazz to have a Talk.

As the leader of the Spec Ops division, Talks fell on Jazz’s shoulders.

Every mech who went into extended (or profound, as it may be in this case) contact with the enemy had one, because basically someone had to make sure everyone knew what to do if things went south.  
It usually involved gruesome explanations, some psyching up after them, and then advice of all kinds, none of which happened to Ratchet because he had heard it about a thousand times by now. 

So while security protocols dictated he had a Talk, his went along these lines:

“Ratchet”

“Jazz”

“You got this, mech?”

“Yes” 

“Good. There’s been a couple of updates to whipe-out and padlock protocols. Here.” 

“Thank you.”

“And here’s that thing Blaster and Wheeljack have been working on. They say it packs a punch. I wouldn’t decompress it until last minute. Last resort kind of thing, yeah?”

“I see.”

“Take care, Ratchet.”

And that was that.

If it was all effectively a trap, and the Constructicons managed to overcome his defenses, then at least they wouldn’t get much out of it. And it would cost them. Oh, yes it would.

It was on that merry thought that Ratchet had left the base and on that same one that he arrived to the coordinates where they had arranged the meeting.

It looked like a huge human-made warehouse, which was a necessary façade considering it was pretty close to human settlements.

He knew of the location. It was a neutral point of reunion, and that, if anything, was more suspicious, because it meant that they had to have gone to some length to distract Soundwave from keeping an optic on it. It would have made no sense to contact the Ark clandestinely only to meet at an obvious place. What on Earth did the slaggers-

And that’s where that line of thought withered and died, because the door opened for him and he gave a look at what was inside.

The only appropriate word for it was tableau. 

They were waiting for him. With things... things like cushions… and colorful engex cubes, and round marbles with what looked like energon inside, and, and- ugh, those where crystal arrangements- AND WILL SMEONE PLEASE BRING A CONTAINER OF SOLVENT TO DIP HIS BRAIN MODULE IN FOR THE LOVE OF FRAGGING PRIMUS!  
The small portion of Ratchet’s processor that was still functioning was metaphorically slamming its head on the wall hoping the blunt trauma would prevent the current memory file from saving.

His face must have had reflected at least part of his thoughts because the six-way beaming that had happened the moment he opened the door was replaced by five very confused expressions and Scrapper was approaching him with his hands up in a pacifying gesture. 

“Hello, Ratchet. We-,” but the Constructicon leader stopped cold and retreated a couple of steps as Ratchet’s frown returned in all its glory, complete with engine revving, and condemning finger stabbing at the room. 

“What is the meaning of all this slag?!” It was amazing. Just when he thought they couldn’t make him angrier about the whole thing, they managed to bring out yet untapped reservoirs of rage he hadn’t even known existed. 

The Decepticons in the room were looking at him as if he had gone completely mad.

“Well…” said Long Haul, who seemed to be the first one to get past the initial shock. “It’s called presents?”

Ratchet’s blazing optics turned to him, and the mech inched backwards without actually moving.

“And what, you thought throwing this, this… stuff makes it all, what, alright?” 

Ratchet’s engine stalled and screeched when something that sounded suspiciously like someone whispering “Makes what alright?” floated from Scavenger’s direction. 

“We um, we made them, er, for you so, ah… because you seemed stressed.”

“Stressed,” the CMO hissed. “I seemed stressed to you? Why, I cannot think of who might be responsible for my stressing, seeing as-”

“Seeing as he must be almost completely recovered by now. How is your patient doing, Autobot?”

Ratchet turned to glare at the surgeon, who was smiling smugly. The bitter comebacks piled up in his vocalizer, but he couldn’t bring himself to say any of them. None had more weight than the small fact that Hook had brought back to the table: Huffer was alive because of them.  
These horrible, disgusting mecha had actually managed to save an Autobot soldier he had pronounced dead. 

He had a debt to pay. 

As much as he knew that they had done it exclusively to create that debt, he’d pay it, because he had sworn he would, and very, very deep down, because an infinitesimal particle of his self was grateful. 

He didn’t have to like it, though, and he damn well wouldn’t pretend he was happy about it for their benefit.

“Alive”

“Ooh good, so the device thingy we made for you worked properly then. That was what you wanted, right?” Ratchet turned to answer the sarcastic remark until he saw the look on Scavenger’s visor and realized the mech was being quite literal. He pinched the ridge of his nose instead, and grunted assent. Out of the corner of his optic he watched Scrapper.

The mech was standing back and watching him intensely. It was odd. Scrapper was usually the voice of the Constructicons but he had barely spoken. His visor just flickered quickly. He seemed to be thinking.

Then, Ratchet saw Mixmaster take one of the colorful cubes from the pile and slowly offer it to him at arms length, as if the Constructicon was feeding a particularly vicious sharkticon, and he started having the intense feeling that he was missing something. It had been a combination of things. It was Scrapper’s silence, Scavenger’s hopeful gaze, Mixmaster’s exaggerated carefulness and the roomful of trinkets.  
It was either that, or this was some sort of bizarre alternative dimension with different laws of logical sentient behavior.

At that point Mixmaster shook the cube slightly in hopes the movement might make it more attractive and his mind wondered back just in time to see Scrapper fold his arms and shake his head.

“Ratchet, I have to say, I am somewhat disappointed,” the CMO had to make a conscious effort for his mouth not to fall open. Definitely going down the rabbit hole. At speed. “I had assumed you would have been more, hmmm, appreciative. Of this. Of our effort.” At the speed of Starscream doing his victory lap around the planet the day Megatron finally kicked the bucket. “We do not usually do this kind of… display for anyone, you know.”

Ratchet realized what he was hearing in Scrapper’s tone was reproach. He was being reproached at. 

That’s when something made click at the back of his helm. These mecha… they had no idea why he was upset. Scrapper was literally whining because he hadn’t gone oooh and aaah at the pretties they had brought him. They didn’t get which part of what they had done was wrong. To them it was just some kind of… exchange. You scratch our backs, we scratch yours. We got you what you wanted and now you give us what we want. Just like that. No great moral dilemma to be had, nossir.

His mouth was hanging open then, because composure can only take a Chief Medical Officer so far.

The nose ridge pinching came back with a vengeance.

“Wait here,” he said and started walking towards the back of the building 

“Where are you going?” Long Haul whined.

Bonecrusher moved subtly towards the entrance, and Ratchet was reminded for a moment that he was an Autobot, locked inside a small building with six fairly large and confused Decepticons who didn’t understand the difference between wooing and extorting, and who clearly felt they were owed something. Regardless of how agreeable they might seem at the moment, things would eventually get ugly if the state of affairs continued. 

He made a quick personal check and confirmed that he still had no frags left to give. 

It would be awesome if he could avoid being turned into a heap of metal shavings, but at this point, his brain module had fritzzed into a state way past fear of death. 

He’d still need to tread carefully for this, though.

“I’m getting a damn chair,” he answered, as he stomped towards the back of the room where the Constructicons had pushed everything out of the way.

“What’s wrong with these?” called Scavenger sadly, patting the cushions. 

The Autobot snorted as he picked a folded chair and brought it back to the circle of green and purple mecha. 

'Hook, I thought you’d have been aware of the inconveniences of organic clothing materials in conjunction with joints. I guess I should have known better. Tsk, tsk.' He had said that to Scavenger, who looked at him in puzzlement. It was petty, but the strangled bass rumble that had come from Hook’s direction had been worth it.

Ratchet sat down opposite to the evidently still confused combiner team. He could see it in their visors, the way they subtly glanced at Scrapper and then back at him. Well, he was not about to start explaining the basics of ethics and morals to anyone right now, no matter how desperately they seemed to need it. Besides the more confused they were the better.

“Here’s the thing. I’m gonna keep my end of the bargain in spite of hating your guts and thinking you are a bag of cogsucking afts whom I wouldn’t have even touch with a laser pointer in any other situation, because my word actually means something. I’m not even going to bother explaining anything else, because if you haven’t caught on why I am not flattered by any of this, Scrapper, I need to explain much more than what a single free shift allows,” he said, at the same time he yanked the cube from Mixmaster’s unresisting hand. He cracked it open and drunk it all in one swing. 

The mecha before him looked mesmerized. A set of fans started humming. 

“Well? What now? Because Primus knows I’m not going to bother with network-managing myself.” 

Ratchet regretted saying that immediately after it left his mouth. It made the buzzing of fans multiply. Several hatches made the universal click noises of mechanical beings thinking of getting lucky in the near future.  
It had sounded like he was eager and he most certainly wasn't. What he was was unnerved and angry, and he wanted both to get everything over with, and delay it as long as possible at the same time.

Five helms snapped in the gestalt leader’s direction as if suddenly magnetized to a Scrapper-shaped pole. Apparently Scrapper had all Constructicon coordinating duties, until the least battle-oriented one. Ah well, no surprise there. Thank Primus it wasn’t Hook. 

Scrapper puffed up slightly as he unspooled a cable from an arm hatch. Visor dark crimson, he approached the chair slowly while the rest of his unit spread to surround it. The closer they got, the more Ratchet noticed the slight crackling of static in the buzz of their ventilation systems. 

So much for subtlety, thought Ratchet bitterly. At least this would mean straight to business and out the door faster.

Scrapper stood right before him. He was a much larger mech than the Autobot CMO to begin with, but being standing while the other mech was sitting made him loom without even trying. In one swift movement he knelt before the chair, and offered up his connector.

Ratchet gave an aggravated groan that would have made Sunstreaker proud and slammed the plug home. He had the pleasure of hearing the kneeling mech make a wonderfully undignified squeak. So much for dignity Scrapper. Too bad, so sad.

Ratchet held the data-exchange authorization for a moment. 

He was a bit surprised the Decepticons hadn’t really initiated any kind of contact yet. He had pegged the Constructicons as the more grabby sorts. Or actually, he had always associated that kind of close contact with combiners in general. They all usually looked so clingy to each other when not combined that it had seemed sort of logical. They did move in an eerily coordinated sort of way, though. They had certainly all winced at the same time when Scrapper had looked at him angrily after plugging in. Heh.

The rest of the Constructicons swiftly connected themselves to Scrapper as well and then, after a final wary firewall testing, Ratchet allowed his spec list to transfer. 

Well, his mildly edited spec list in any case. 

It wasn’t that he was trying to look more appealing, frag no, but this was wartime. It didn’t pay off to have an enemy unit find out his suspension was not, in fact, in mint condition. He suspected it was a mutual thing when he was pinged back with six squeaky-clean lists in turn. 

Bonecrusher crossed his arms defiantly at the raised eyebrow he received right after his came through. That amount of external plate density, Bonecrusher, really? Why, it’s like you never received a punch in your life, how fortunate.

Six optic arrays unfocused a bit from the medic’s perpetual frown as they lost themselves in happy component browsing. Ratchet could swear he heard a nervous giggle coming from Scavenger’s direction. Actually, none were being really subtle about the ogling. He could almost tell when they got to the hand specialized equipment just by the general stuttering of fans. It was just the list, for crying out loud. It was just for compatibility issues in firmware, it took him all of thirty seconds to browse his set.

The mecha around him jumped slightly when he coughed in his hand loudly. 

“Are you done with the whole acting like sparks right out of the factory? This is minutes of my life I’m not getting back.”

Hook sniggered to his right, hovering closer to his helm. “I have to say, it’s nice to see you are eager for-”

“Yes. So very eager. My joints are quivering with unabashed desire. Now get going before I actually go into stasis. You lot are stalling.” That was said in a completely matter a fact voice, rather than taunt. He could feel Bonecrusher’s hands hovering somewhere above his shoulders, shifting slightly, hesitant. For all the closing in and looming, the Deepticons where just standing there, except for Scrapper who was kneeling, albeit with the exact same wanna-grab-but-no look to him. He could even see how charged up they were. The static was already high enough there were little sparks flaring up here and there in their plating. Ratchet pulled up the network logs in his HUD. The incoming connection registered a whooping one percent increase in traffic flow but beyond his end of things, the network seemed to be blazing. What the— Oh. 

Ooooooooh, this was precious. And by precious, Ratchet meant superbly irritating and stupid. They were stalling. They were stalling because no one had the guts to make the first move. Not even Scrapper, who had yet to acknowledge the handshaking for high traffic parameters after the initial contact. 

Well, he was down right cheering at the fact that the scrap heaps were keeping their hands to themselves, but slagging Pit, this would take forever. If things continued in this limbo of anxiousnes he'd blow every single gasket he had. 

He sighed tiredly. Well, let it not be said that he hadn’t prepared for everything this day might throw at him. 

The medic sat back more comfortably in the chair, crossing his arms. His optics turned inwards and dimmed slightly as he made the pertinent requests to his long-terms data storage. The file came up in his HUD.

After a few seconds, Ratchet heard something that sounded like an intake filter passing down a particularly stubborn particle of grit. His optics lit up to Scrapper’s visor thinned to an incandescent sliver. 

Something inside the medic laughed bitterly. Anger loves company, just like misery.

“Ratchet… What are you doing?” Scrapper’s voice had a shaky growl to it. 

Yes, definitely loves company. Good. “One second, I’m a screen away from finishing the chapter.”

His helm bounced off hard against the back of the chair when Scrapper’s massive hands slammed on the armrests. “Do not ignore me, Autobot!” Charge surged violently through the connection making Ratchet hiss.

“Or what? What will you do exactly?” the medic answered quietly, squirming slightly as he let the uncomfortable rush pass through. The current bounced back through the connection before it had time to even warm up his interface array. “What do you even want from me? To enjoy the moment? Sorry, but you are about as skilled at this as… well, scrap, I can’t even find anyone who sucks enough for comparison at the moment. ”

“How do you get off—“

“I’m not, that’s the point.” The armrests screeched as they got reshaped with perfect handhold dents. Both their engines were rattling angrily by then, swallowing every other noise in the room. “I told you exactly how happy I am with this, Scrapper.”

“Why YOU—,“ The rumbling’s pitch coming from Scrapper was terribly high for a split second, and then it paused with a choked noise. After a few seconds it resumed in a steady idling growl.  
For once, the nose ridge pinching wasn’t being done by Ratchet. “Yes, so you have said.” 

To Ratchet’s surprise, Scrapper sounded somewhere between exasperated and amused. There was the wariest squint until the medic noticed the fans in the room had kicked up a notch. Primus, someone was actually purring. 

It seemed at least someone in the audience had a thing for verbal bludgeoning... or for angry Scrapper, for all Ratchet cared to tell. Ugh, the more you know. He could feel the charge flow was moving again, now. Not anymore the explosion of a single angry mech, but the heady ebb and flow of a coordinated group raising a shared current. It was strong enough that he had caught a glimpse of the emotions bouncing through the lines, in spite of the tons of firewalls piled upon each other.

The Constructicons were burning with plain need and they were cramming it all along the current. It was a most unsubtle kind of flattery. If they had been anyone else, Ratchet would have been basking on it. Circumstances being what they were, it all just made him mentally go Ew.

“Aren’t you a kinky lot,” he sneered, wishing he could physically pack the firewalls on the gateway connection like a clogging agent for a rusting tube. 

The mech to Scrapper’s left perk up instantly. “Ooooh, well, let me tell you--” Scavenger said brightly. 

“That wasn’t an invitation!”

“Aww, ok… It sounded like one.” There was much pouting. Scavenger was a champion pouter. Ratchet groaned, and then jerked back when he realized Hook had groaned in chorus. 

“It wasn’t an invitation Scavenger,” Scrapper repeated, visor glinting when Ratchet looked his way again. “But promises are promises, hmm?” A large hand rose and traced the edge of the chevron before him with the pad of his thumb. 

Ratchet grew very still, optics darkening to a dull grayish blue. This was it. He’d told himself he knew this would have had to come eventually, but deep inside, right along the part of himself that felt responsible for promises made, there had been a very small fragment of his mind that had hoped he could have weaseled out of it.

He jumped as a hand fell gently on his shoulder. “Why don’t you relax? We can make it really good, I promise.” Long Haul’s oddly soothing tone made the Autobot go from glum resignation to blistering in two seconds flat. “We keep our promises, too, you know? Like you said?” His armor clamped so hard in aggravation his HUD started showing him warnings for impeding wire damage. He turned angrily to snap at the flinching Constructicon and then stopped.

Ratchet's optics flickered. Then flickered again, and again as the idea that just struck him solidified. 

Wires.

He rifled through his medical protocols feverishly trying to ignore the feeling of large hands slowly tracing transformation seams.

As he sped through the index he felt a kind of contentment descend upon himself. It was the satisfaction that came when there was finally a way to proactively use the tons of spite that had been building up against someone. If it worked he would be both keeping his word AND fragging them over. He’d probably get a Honorary Swindle badge. 

Yessss, there it was. 

The Autobot CMO cackled merrily behind blank faceplates. Oh, he was so looking forwards to seeing their slagged faces.

He’d need fuel though, and time. More time than the Constructicon leader was apparently going to allow him. 

“Can I get another one?” He glanced for a second at Mixmaster. Scrapper nodded, still tracing the edges of his helm gently, making a shiver pass down the medic’s back struts. “Make it two. I rather be completely fendered, if you don’t mind.”

“Not at all” crowed the mech happily as he turned to browse the brightly colored stacks. Of course they wouldn’t mind. Decepticons fragging thoroughly overcharged partners? Someone please register Ratchet’s complete lack of surprise for the universal archives.

The Autobot downed the new cubes just as fast as the first one, getting a tiny disappointed whine out of Mixmaster. He was trying to make the best of the window between having his tanks full and being overcharged to Cybertron and back. He accessed the protocol he had been looking for and started fiddling with it as fast as he could, feeling the edge of his vision starting to blurr. 

Ratchet spared one second to pray for the good luck of tipsy medics in desperate situations, and set the process tree to run in the background of his processor. A progress bar popped up in his HUD. 

Now all he needed was time.

He returned to what was going on outside of his own helm just when his ports got hit by a wave of heady charge, making the world wobble dangerously. Apparently, Scrapper had deciding they’d been stalling enough.

The six mecha closed in like a sudden purple and green landslide. 

They licked and nipped in waves that mimicked the tide of electricity through their shared systems, a coordinated flowing of fingertips following the path Scrapper ignited slowly. Electricity sought and pooled in particular relays at the exact moment it was kissed to the surface by a hungry mouth, static discharges making a connection for a fraction of a second between internal networking, armor, and lips. It made every touch feel as if it was done directly over Ratchet’s protoform, something he would have admired as an impressive display of coordination and skill if his brain module hadn’t been attempting to crawl away through the back of his helm. 

Being as it was, Ratched just squirmed and shivered with the prickly feelings, while his temperature climbed at almost negative speed. The woozy feeling of high-grade was making actually ignoring the Constructicons attentions more difficult, but anger was a wonderful focusing lens that colored every sensation a shade of murky brown. 

Not that his lack of response did anything to deter the combiner team. Scrapper’s attention was clearly turned inwards, more set into directing charge and data through the cabling than anything else, one hand on a hand-rest while the other endlessly traced idle circles along Ratchet’s thigh. It made sense, coordinating that many people ought to require a lot of concentration. 

Huh.

“I’ve actually agreed to networking, not to all this pawing,” the medic said, words slightly distorted with static.

There was a hitch in their movements and the rhythm of the charge wavered for a fraction of a second. Ratchet felt their gazes flicker at Scrapper.

Who seemed to not have taken much notice at all. 

Something that sounded faintly like “Mmmhmm?” left the Constructicon’s vocalizer while his hand continued its aimless journey across white plating.

Ratchet shook one arm free from whoever had been licking on it, in order to cross them both on his chest. A quick glance revealed it had been Hook, so he took a moment before that to direct a poisonous glare at the surgeon while he unsubtly wiped it on Scrapper’s forearm. That effectively got the front-end loader’s attention along with a rised visor ridge. 

Said visor was met with a glare and a set of hunched shoulders that eventually made everyone in the room just stop and look at them. If red and white plating got any tighter they’d start getting pink at the edges. It was the epitome of defensiveness, if defensiveness had also included the gentlest swaying, which was quite a feat since Ratchet was sitting down. 

Scrapper sighed a put-upon sigh, vocalizer shaky with charge “Are you seriously expecting me to believe you had been intending only for a hard-line connection the whole time, and this is not just you being even more… complicated?”

“I am. Being. Complicated,” the Autobot spat. His engine gurgled with the noise of a piece of machinery hitting terminal levels of internal pressure. “It’s not about what I intended, it’s about what was objecty- objectly- objectively negotiated!” 

“Is that so?” said the Constructicon Leader, head cocking in amused disbelief, following the soft bobbing of the medic’s helmet. 

Ratchet could see the rust-munching aft was enjoying himself. “Yes! It’s exactly what you’ve been babbling non-stop, I’m keeping my end of the barg- HEY” 

Bonecrusher chuckled when the medic turned angrily at whoever had nipped the back of his neck. “Plugging alone is boring”, the bulldozer rumbled “That an Autobot thing?” He dipped forward catching Ratchet’s chevron with his lips, and gently slid his teeth on the edge, “You’re missing on the good stuff.” 

That was immediately followed by an ergh sound when Ratchet almost pierced his cheek with a head-butt.

“For your information, it’s only boring if you don’t have the skills required for it. I will go ahead and assume you don’t. Not that I was expecting much better.”

“O~oh, is that a challenge?” floated from somewhere behind him. The medic chose to ignore that because, at this point, the room danced a little jig every time he turned his head. He closed his optics and tried to keep himself from face-palming, which would most certainly make him even dizzier. The conversation was becoming a mined field of innuendo. Apparently, whatever insult he could come up with would be turned into a wave of leering visors and harharhar, I see what you did der expressions. Just. Great. 

“Would you like to make a bet on how long you can last with cables alone? We can cash our winnings some other day on this same place.” Yes. Of course I would be Hook. The reek of smug and desperate questing for his validation would choke him yet.  
Ratchet waved a hand irritably at the surgeon, who caught it in his, and nipped at his knuckles, making the medic start and take it back hurriedly. Shoot, the aft with a hand fetish. He needed to stop forgetting vital facts like that... what had Mixmaster put on those cubes, they grade must have been high enough to topple a dinobot in one gulp. 

Scrapper’s amused laugh focused the medic’s fuming scowl back on him.  
Ratchet’s power plant had been working on the high-grade for a while now, and it was making straight thinking desperately hard. Just opening his optics to the light of the Constructicon’s visor made him hiss and squint.

The hulking mech put his elbows on the armrests, forcing Ratchet to plaster himself to the back of the chair to get at least an inch of breathing space. “I don’t think it’s an Autobot thing. I think you are stalling now, Ratchet. So much for the ‘get going before I actually go into stasis’, hmmm?”  
The sheer heat and charge radiating from the mech made Ratchet’s tanks churn, and he had to make an effort to keep the engex down. 

It couldn’t be long now, just a little more time.

Ratchet resettled his vocalizer a few times trying to catch the right words through the hazy bloating his mind “Well, you can’t blame me for trying to keep your disgusting hands off my person.”

Said hands clearly had no such intentions. The Constructicon leader slid clever fingertips up and down the medic’s abdominal plates, following the transformation seams with minute tinking noises. “Bonecrusher is right, too. We can show you much more interesting things than just hard-lining.” He leaned forward, tracing the edge of the flinching medic’s jaw with the vertex of his mask. 

“I’d mmmuh-much prefer if you didn’t”, the Autobot mumbled.

Suddenly, his HUD popped up an alert. The progress bar hit full completion.

Ratchet gasped when his body temperature hiked out of nowhere.

Hook looked up from the task that had been absorbing him, which involved Ratchet’s finger tips and extremely dedicated licking... again. His visor squinted. “What was that?” 

Ratchet looked at him, expression turning into a strained, bitter sneer “Getting mmmy hands drooled on, is what” He was panting slightly now.

Hook glanced for a moment toward Scrapper, who was now looking at the medic from way too close, and Ratchet could feel both of them as they scanned the network, cautiously poking and prodding. 

“I think he’s finally enjoying himself, mmmh?” Behind the chair, Bonecrusher dipped his fingers through the gaps in between the medic’s shoulder and torso. “We knew you’d like it.”

“Primus, keep on guessing,” Ratchet grated through clenched teeth. The bulldozer’s chuckle barely registered on Ratchet’s audios, through the mounting electricity flooding his systems. 

Hook’s squint, though, hadn’t changed. His visor became a thin strip of red “Mmmh, that’s not- What?! Aaargh, you fragging miserable aft” 

Ratchet opened his mouth to say something and then stopped, back struts taut for a few seconds. His limbs seized and locked while sparks crackled, optics suddenly shut in a strained grimace that looked much more painful than any overload should. 

The Decepticons stared frozen as the medic slumped on the chair, panting.

“Did he just…”

“I think he did.”

“What just happened?” 

“What happened? What happened?!” Hook exploded like a bad fuse, “He’s a piece of slag, that’s what happened!” the rage seemed to have built so high at that point that it made the surgeon tremble, which prompted a drunken, tired giggle from Ratchet. “That,” shouted the surgeon, waving a finger at the offending Autobot, “was an wiring stress-test, the slag-sucking, rusted—arrrgh”

“The frag’s that?”

Rachet followed drowzily the wavering finger before his optics. Hook’s capacity to point straight was being compromised by what were probably unholy amounts of frustration. That, combined with the offended bickering surrounding him, was like a balm for his spark right now. A small smile inched its way into the medic’s face.

“Wire check-up, you under-clocked moron! Sucks up charge and runs it through a closed system to check for connectivity issues.”

“Mmmm, kinky…”

“No! Not kinky! It locks port transit just before overload! Did you feel it when it hppaned? No? That’s because the piece of Autobot slag locked us OUT.” 

“Rude! Who the frag uses that to get off?!”

Ratchet rubbed his optics muzzily. “I’m sorry, you must have missed the part where I said I didn’t give two frags about you all. Actually, I don’t even give one.”

“You promised, Ratchet.” Scrapper said softly. The other Constructicons went completely silent, and backed off slightly. 

“I never got out of the network, Scrapper,” the medic said, with a sarcastic whine “I gave my word I’d let you a round of plugging, I never said it wouldn’t be a lousy one.” 

“You little—

“What? Wasn’t cuddly enough for you? Excuse me while I laugh myself sick.” He unclipped Scrapper’s jack and flicked it disdainfully at the Decepticon’s face. 

When he reached out to slap the port hatch close, his hand got grabbed roughly by Long Haul. “We are not over, Autobot.” Ratchet turned to answer when his face was yanked back to the Constructicon leader’s narrowed visor. “That was interestingly resourceful. I know a few people who might find that amusing,” the fingers pressed until metal just about buckled, “You really thought we’d stop just because you were finished, though? I may have underestimated how conceited you are, Ratchet.” 

“Finished?” The word was spat with so much acid it could have charred paint but Ratchet’s face was calm, “I can run at least five more before I start taking significant damage.” 

“Significant-?” Scrapper recoiled violently, letting go as if the medic was burning. “What in the Pit is your damage?! What is it that you don’t get? Why aren't you flattered? The Autobots don't appreciate you! We appreciate you!” He gestured at the medic, then at the room, and then at the other Constructicons, who seemed mildly taken aback by all the flailing, but mostly, it seemed, by Autobot logic.

Ratchet silently tracked the movement of open hands waving slightly in an attempt to physically grasp a concept that was so alien it was completely out of Scrapper’s reach. The awkward silence stretch until the blazing visor before him dimmed to a dull maroon and there was the rustle of feet shuffling uncomfortably.

The medic stared at the mech in front of him, his face cold and tired.

“Are you done?”

Scrapper’s hands closed into fists, engine revving angrily. 

Ratchet thought this was it. This was the moment when he got his faceplate bashed into funny shapes. He was oddly proud. He really had hoped he could come out unharmed but seeing his own rage mirrored for a moment made the whole moment just fine.

Then Scrapper’s engine stalled. The engineer looked at the cable he was still holding for a moment, and then wordlessly spooled it back.  
The rest of the Constructicons then moved in eerie coordination, silently disconnecting each other and getting away from the Autobot. Their gazes darted between themselves with what was evidently an internal dialogue, flickering now and then towards the still sitting CMO. 

Suddenly they all turned towards Scrapper. He simply said “Go.”

Ratchet’s optics widened slightly. That was it? They’d let him just… go?  
He got up from the chair slowly, eyes fixed on Scrapper, preparing for a sudden attack that didn’t come. He gave a few steps backwards, keeping them in sight for a last piece of good measure, and then turned to the exit. 

“Wait”

Ratchet froze, and looked back, apprehension filling his lines with cold and fear. 

Scrapper took a step towards the medic, and then one backwards where he had been. The air of authority he waved when surrounded by his gestalt wavered with his shuffling feet. “Could you…? Could you explain it to us?” His voice was wavering slightly. Ratchet couldn’t tell if it was charge still going through his system, or anger, or something else. 

The question mark hung in the air. 

Ratchet considered it for an instant. Maybe there was a possibility of managing to convey just how fragged up this whole situation had been. Maybe he could explain to them just how utterly amoral their actions were, and why he had felt nothing but anger and disgust the moment he had agreed on all of this. 

“If we try to understand what you, uh, said. Will you - WOULD you ever consider...maybe..?”

Anger coated all of Ratchet’s thoughts in red once again. 

“No,” he snapped. “You lot are still as attractive as a bucket of used oil. Now if you’ll excuse me, there is people waiting for me elsewhere whom I actually do want to frag.” 

Two strides got him out of the warehouse, and a second later he was peeling rubber in the Ark’s direction.

\------------


End file.
